


Upon Your Shoulders

by supposed2bfunny



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Archangel Gabriel, Augustine's Confessions, BAMF! Aziraphale, Crowley is a mess, Excessive use of italics, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Original Characters - Freeform, The Them - Freeform, adam young - Freeform, ask to tag, because yall need a fair warning for that tripe, but now is not the time, crowley is very very in love, if you don't like gore tread cautiously, ineffable husbands, more tags will come as the story expands, multi-chapter, really graphic depictions of violence ahead, they're just here to be bad guys don't get too attached, wow Aziraphale is really emotionally constipated huh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 54,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22137808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supposed2bfunny/pseuds/supposed2bfunny
Summary: When a battle with a group of rogue demons leaves Aziraphale grievously wounded, Crowley has to figure out to how pick up the broken pieces. The question arises soon after: is it better for them to stay together, or do they stand a better chance of recuperating only if they part ways?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have been working on this fic for MONTHS NOW and I'm finally ready to start posting chapters! Given just how much incredible fan content is out there for Good Omens, I have to apologize if this is a trope that feels a little tired by now. I can assure you that when I started writing it in the early autumn, it felt a lot more original than it does now that I've read dozens of Ineffable Husbands stories.
> 
> Nonetheless, please enjoy. Feedback is always greatly appreciated. Feel free to chat to me on [ Tumblr](https://supposed2bfunny.tumblr.com) where I'm most active! Thank you for taking the time to read this!

_I woke up sweating on the moaning Mount of Olives,  
My black dove penance weighing down my feather feet,  
Woven into my skin the covenants I’d broken,  
My granite heart will not forget what it once was:  
A coffer full of your love, I couldn’t bear it_

__

__

_"Oarsman," Republic of Wolves_

He isn’t prepared for what comes after he and Aziraphale save the earth from Armageddon.

Well, to be fair, maybe they’d had some help. Adam Young had done most of the work, really, he and his little friends. And that witch had been there, with that nerd who broke computers, the one with the ugly blue car. And Shadwell had been there for some reason or other, or maybe he’d just tagged along to make sure Aziraphale didn’t damage that poor woman’s body while he was possessing her…

A motley crew, the lot of them. But they’d done it.

So it’s what comes _after_ the end of the world and its subsequent continuing to revolve that really floors Crowley. He had never known that he was capable of laughing so hard. And yet, sitting on a park bench, hearing Aziraphale animatedly recount how he’d asked Archangel Michael for a towel? Oh, and the laugher that comes later that day is even better. They dine at the Ritz, Crowley’s treat of course, his mouth gone all slack and mushy with relief, unable to restrain the way he looks at the angel sitting across from him, positively illuminating the entire restaurant with his smiles. After eating, after desserting, after Crowley is positive that Aziraphale is satisfied with the blackberry soufflé that he’s had before but proclaims is ‘timeless,’ he drives them back to the bookshop, both of them pleasantly buzzed, only to get absolutely sloshed as they count the new books Adam has added to the angel’s collection. Aziraphale is generous, dipping into some of the best bottles he’s squirreled away over the centuries, topping up Crowley’s glasses repeatedly now, benediction after benediction, like he can’t thank Crowley enough. The full plummy taste of a 1959 Bordeaux on his tongue unwinds some of the tension in his spine like nothing else has managed to do yet.

They sit, first in chairs opposite one another in the back of the shop, and ultimately settling on opposite sides of a single settee, Crowley’s legs spread, long limbs threatening to spill over onto the floor, as fluid as the red wine that splashes against the fine crystal glass he holds at leisure.  
Somehow, Aziraphale manages to remain remarkably upright for someone as devastatingly inebriated as he is, angelic light still eking out of his crow’s feet as he smiles.

And they talk, and talk, and exchange secrets and laugh until tears pour down their faces.

After falling asleep on the settee, Crowley ends up spending the night unintentionally, waking up groggy and hungover (having forgetting to sober himself up before dozing off) to the smell of Irish Breakfast and a plate full of toast and butter and jam, served by an angel that beams with benevolence even as he nurses his own hangover. He continues smiling at Crowley like the demon has just offered him the world on a silver platter.

 _You’re the one who dared to ask about the Great Plan_ , Crowley wants to tell him, but he doesn’t. 

He is allowed to stay. That much is clear. Despite their good moods, Aziraphale does not want to let Crowley out of his sight any more than Crowley wants to let the angel exit a room without his supervision. It’s mutual then: a need to stay together until they can start to unclench and feel normal again.

Columns of burning hellfire, bathtubs full of holy water.

Some visions refuse to exit the backs of their eyes. 

The only way to move past their horror is to look at something else. The same morning that Aziraphale meets him in the back room and serves him Irish Breakfast and toast, he reaches over, grabs the sunglasses that Crowley had shed at some point during the night and placed on top of a rickety bookcase. He hands them back, making sure his fingers touch only the arms of the sunglasses so as not to smudge the lenses.

 _Your shield_.

Crowley takes them, slips them on, and looks into the dawnlight blue of the angel’s eyes, his own eyes now invisible.

 _Thank you. For understanding_. 

The second day of the rest of their lives, they go out to lunch, and it’s as they’re walking back along Bond Street that they pass the front yard. The flat itself is charming, but the small front yard is clearly in the middle of some landscaping to transition it for autumn. The grass has been torn up, covered in dirt and hay, presumably being tilled so the owners can once again plant come springtime, showing off their prime real estate with the sorts of flowers and impossibly green grass that Crowley has always found showy, Aziraphale, pleasant.

Pecking at the ground—perhaps going after bugs beneath the freshly-turned earth, perhaps selecting seeds from the bits of hay—is a small flock of brown sparrows. They blend into the earth so well that at first Crowley fails to notice them. It’s not until he and the angel are walking right past them that his eyes catch the movement of the speckled birds bopping about, beaks in the ground, tails pointed skyward.

Aziraphale stops right in the middle of the sidewalk, clearly intending to watch them for a while. And so, Crowley tucks in against him, glaring icily at anyone who looks annoyed by the bookish man blocking the busy road. The demon prepares himself to cast harsh words and snide mockery at anyone who dares snap at his companion: it’s a habit they’ve fallen into over their millennia together: Aziraphale, a creature of love, is often floored by his adoration of God’s bloody green earth. It’s not uncommon for him to stop to gaze at birds, at new mothers cooing at their babies inside cafes, even at the way sunlight filters through leaves in trees overhead. Slowing down and waiting out these flights of wonder have become routine for the demon.

With wonder plain on his features, Aziraphale watches the birds. A minute passes, then ten. After almost half an hour, the birds are ready to move on to the next prospect of food, spreading their wings and taking off into the air soundlessly.

The angel turns his head, watching them go, and there is a faint dampness in his eyes.

“We saved all of this,” he says to Crowley, awestruck, humbled.

It hits Crowley then, the way it does every so often—on the wall of Eden, in Rome, at a monastery during the Black Plague in Florence, in the Bentley with a thermos between them, or when Aziraphale held out his hand the night after they averted the apocalypse, promised that he trusted Crowley with his life, and proposed they switch bodies—it hits him that he is very, very, very in love with this creature of Heaven.

This creature with the power to help shape the universe, armed by the Almighty with a sword, capable of solar system-wide acts of divine retribution.

Who has chosen him.

To live on earth, eating scones and strolling through the park and tearing up at the sight of a handful of fucking sparrows.

Oh, but he adores him.

August succumbs to September, which withers into October. Cold weather comes early, and many folk suggest that they are in for a harsh winter: humans have found little ways to perceive God’s stylistic take on the changing seasons: bountiful acorns falling from oak trees mean heavy snow. Some of the old ladies at the market claim they can feel in their arthritic bones that the upcoming months will be brutal. Crickets begin making their way into homes earlier than usual, as do mice and spiders. No lions giving birth in the middle of Piccadilly, but Crowley hears enough murmurs to know his snakey aversion to wintery weather is going to make the upcoming season a harsh one. A new scarf is in order then, and perhaps some thick, toasty gloves as well.

So life goes, and so they find themselves bundled up one late November day, walking together through Hyde Park, sipping oversweet cappuccinos from paper cups and discussing the omnipresent nature of geese, when a shadow passes over them from above.

Crowley shivers, looks up at at the sky.

No. No birds have flown over them to cast the quick, dark shadow. He stops mid-step, losing all sense of Aziraphale’s chatter, of the dozens of voices calling out around them, of the traffic and the sirens and the ringing of church bells. It all fades to white as a familiar, sulphuric smell fills his nose and his skin prickles with awareness that they are not alone. And the shadow has not passed from overhead: it has passed from below.

“Aziraphale,” he murmurs, reaching out, hand clenching around the angel’s forearm. His tone is enough to tip the angel off.

“Oh, no,” he says, first alarmed, then mournful. “No, Crowley. It can’t be. It’s only been three months—”

But it is. Unseen by the hundreds of humans enjoying the park and shopping along the busy streets nearby, the ground gives way and three figures wrench their way up from the soil, clawing out of the earth and wincing against the glaring partial sunlight of London’s early afternoon sky.

It’s a bit like watching a funeral, but in reverse. Fitting, since with every rip of the ground against the powerful fists of the demons, he is aware of the fact that something is coming to an end. This honeymooning grace period, the free hours he’s had to watch Aziraphale relax, ease into himself a bit more. It’s over. They have watched the clouds dance and change with the season, and they have both grown complacent, assuming this happiness was theirs for the next few centuries at least. It’s been nice, forgetting about Hell as best he could. He finds that he needs to take several steps back: the stench of sulfur and the dried blood of recently-tortured souls brings memories surging forward. It had been a wonderful dream, to pretend that he’d earned a respite from this fate.

Star-crafter, pursuer of truth, question-garbler, sweet apple tempter. This was it: he could delude himself all he wanted, pretend that Aziraphale’s presence was somehow enough to negate his destiny. But it would always come back to this. He was a demon, after all. Nothing could ever transmute the blackness of his soul, and he would always attract his own sort.

As the demons—three in total—step forth, the first thing that Crowley notes is that he’s not familiar with any of them. The second thing that he notices is that they seem to have an idea who he is, since they’re looking right at him. The third thing he notices is that they are not pleased with what they see.

“So then,” speaks one of the three demons, the shortest of the three. His eyes, like Crowley’s, are somewhat reptilian. He brushes a bit of soil off of his gray overcoat. “This is him, huh? S’pose we didn’t miss much when he missed his near-execution at all then, did we?”

“We were busy that day anyway,” replies another demon. His hair is long and wavy, his teeth are sharp and appear to be full of dead bugs, and he clearly has not consulted any modern fashion magazines before coming to Earth, as his clothing resembles something worn by members of the Sultan’s high court in the Ottoman Empire circa 1750 or so. The shoes are very much to Crowley’s taste, if he’s being perfectly honest, and their silvery accents match his kaftan perfectly.

“Hush now,” orders the last demon, and coincidentally the one standing right in the middle. It’s obvious that he’s the one in charge. No one in Hell has ever been able to resist the call to pose dramatically in such a way that belies rank and file. This man is tall and slim, with a dark blue peacoat buttoned up to his throat and a short black beard that is unfortunate even by Hell’s standards. “Let me speak.” His bile-green eyes meet Crowley’s. “Are you then Crowley, the demon formerly known as Crawly?”

He opens his mouth to reply when Aziraphale beats him to it: “I should think that we ought to be the ones asking the questions here, given that this is our turf that you’ve just tread upon. Now, don’t give me that look, you really mustn’t be rude. Go ahead and introduce yourselves and state your business.”

He sounds authoritative, which Crowley reads as a clear indication that he is in fact quite flustered at the moment. Without taking his eyes off the three demons, he makes out the way Aziraphale’s fingers settle on his gold pinky ring, twisting it around his finger. 

Both demons glance at their leader, clearly wondering if he’ll respond to Aziraphale, or do something more drastic. Thankfully, after he’s taken a moment to process the angel’s words, he breaks into a smile. “How right you are,” he says. “My deepest apologies. My name is Ziminiar. These are two compatriots of mine, Asag to my left, and Marchosias to my right. You must be the Principality with whom Crowley has averted Armageddon and the Great War that Was to Come. Strange, you look a bit more like a Cherub to me.”

“So I’ve heard,” Aziraphale mutters, dropping his hands to his sides abruptly, only to straighten his waistcoat unnecessarily a moment later. “Now you’ve introduced yourselves; state your business.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Asag, the one with reptilian eyes, starts in. Ziminiar holds up a hand, silencing him.

“We are here because we wanted to see the demon responsible for keeping us bound to our lowly secretarial positions in Hell when we could have been tormenting the Archangels of Heaven as we speak.”

“Oh right, of course. You’re upset that the Great War didn’t occur,” Crowley replies. “Well guys, awfully sorry about that. Not so sure how you thought our lot was going to win that anyway if I’m being honest, but what can I say? Thought avoiding the whole er, _ordeal_ , might be a better solution. Turns out we weren’t so clear on the Almighty’s intentions, so, here we are. Intermission, you might say we’re taking. Sorry if uh,” he spares a quick glance at Aziraphale, who shrugs; he sniffs, “if you’re a bit bored in the meantime. Sure we can look forward to a war eventually. At some point or other. So eh, yup.”

“Jolly good, any other questions, or are you quite prepared to leave now that you’ve heard it straight from the horse’s mouth?” chimes the angel, clapping his hands together.

“That’s it?” Marchosias asks. “How’d you manage to do it?”

Crowley shrugs. Frankly, he’d only stalled Satan with his ability to manipulate time. Aziraphale had been the one who’d gone and asked questions out of turn, which eventually alarmed Gabriel and Beezelbub enough to back off and reconsider until they could get some clearer answers from their higher-ups. “Just uh, pointed out a few inconsistencies in ole’ Beez’s story. Before you go to war, you really ought to make sure you dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s, don’t you think? Otherwise, we could have lost to his bunch,” he points to his companion. “Yuck, right?”

“And what about War?” Asks Ziminiar. “Was she not in attendance?”

“She was, but some children bullied her and she took off in quite the huff,” says Aziraphale. “Same goes for Pollution—” he eyes Marchosias’ clothing dubiously, then adds, as if to clarify, “formerly known as Pestilence, in case you’re not up to present code. And Famine too, I’m afraid. And the Antichrist had some heated words with Death, so he decided to pop off as well. You mustn’t blame Crowley for the lack of battle. It was really more…well, a series of disagreements and miscommunication that led everyone present to mutually decide to call the whole thing off. Plain and simple. I believe humans these days call it a ‘domino effect.’” 

None of them seem impressed by his cutesy term, or his air quotes.

“That’s not how it came across to us in Hell,” Ziminiar says coolly. “I have heard of a trial. Of a traitor before a tribunal, a certain snake sentenced to death-by-holy-water who bathed in it like it was a rain puddle and who ultimately escaped to Earth to live out his banishment alongside a certain angelic co-conspirator,” his eyes flick to said co-conspirator and narrow, “who, coincidentally, seems to have survived whatever punishment Heaven concocted for his own betrayal of his side.”

“Well done,” Crowley interjects smoothly. “You’ve really brought us up to speed. Anyone who wasn’t there for both book and television program must feel quite established now. So, we done then? These paper cups don’t keep drinks warm for very long, and I’m sure you know all about how our lot is responsible for what lukewarm coffee tastes like.”

“Perhaps I should be a bit more forward,” Ziminiar muses with a shadow of a smile. “I don’t particularly care for your take on how the War was called off. What I want is to correct that oversight.”

“You’re looking to incite war?” The angel asks, looking around in horror. Curiously, no passersby seem much affected by the conversation taking place. One of the three demons is surely making it so that every human nearby bustles about without a second thought of the gathering of strangely-dressed men in the middle of the park.

“I’d love to, but I doubt I alone am capable of such an endeavor,” he answers.

“Don’t speak so disparagingly of yourself,” Asag croaks at his associate, and Ziminiar’s half-smile flickers down at the placating words.

“I’m here because I have wanted Earth since the souls of its inhabitants were first wrenched from me by the hands of that dreadful King Solomon and his divine support. For centuries, I’ve plotted my vengeance, my conquest. I counted down the days to Armageddon so that I could finally return on the heels of the Antichrist and his Hellhound.”

“Of course, Hellhound,” Crowley replies. “Cute, furry little thing, him.”

“And needless to say, when word got back to us from Lord Beelzebub that we would not be embarking on a war, that due to the actions of a certain idiot who’d spent his time on my rightful realm fraternizing with the enemy, that it would be more paperwork and petty tormenting of fresh recruits for the next foreseeable eternity, I got a bit, hm…frustrated.” He draws the last word out, articulating so clearly that they get a glimpse of each and every one of his teeth.

“I woulda went with _bloodthirsty_ ,” Marchosias adds.

“Rest assured that is always implied,” he deadpans.

“Look, I already said I was sorry,” Crowley replies, “but as I’ve explained, this wasn’t really on me at all! The Almighty’s stance remains unclear and—”

“Hang the Almighty’s stance,” Ziminiar bellows, “I want this planet for myself! And if I can’t conquer it through our destined Great War, I will claim it the old fashioned way.” He gestures behind him, to Asag and Marchosias respectively. “I found these two like-minded co-workers, who share a similar desire to raze. I’ll put this simply, Crowley: I know you’ve got stakes in this planet’s well-being, and I know you’ve got connections to the enemy. I’m not sure how you pulled that little stunt with the holy water, but you have our respect for it.”

“Thanks _ss_ ,” his eyes again flicker to Aziraphale, who reaches up to straighten his immaculate bow-tie. The trifecta of anxious tics has been completed: Aziraphale is a wingflutter away from full-on panic although his expression remains neutral, save for the occasional twitch of a fake smile, which vanishes from his mouth the moment it starts to take shape. Old habits die hard.

“So you can stick around if you want. Bur really I suggest you find another planet to spend your exile on, because things are about to get messy here.”

“Oh no,” Aziraphale cuts him off. “No. You misunderstand. Earth is the only place Crowley and I intend to live out our lives of…well, if you must call it exile, very well. This is our home. We won’t step out of the way just so you can sneak out of your desk duties to enjoy the bloodbath you feel you deserve. This is neutral ground and treading on it warrants immediate expulsion.”

“Yet here we still stand, angel,” Marchosias sneers, stepping forward, looking ready for a fight. “That mean you’re too scared to try? Been a few millennia since you’ve expelled anyone, oh Guardian of Eden?”

“Not the least bit, in fact. It’s just that…” Aziraphale’s gaze flits to Crowley, and he cocks his head, beseeching. “Surely there is a way to settle this without fighting, no?”

“Not really getting that impression, angel, no.”

“We held Beezelbub and Gabriel off,” he cries, eyes going very round in his panic. “Why should this be any different? Let’s try to reason with them—”

Asag lunges forward, grabs Aziraphale by the throat, and smiles at him with a grin that could freeze plasma. He hefts the angel up as though he weighs no more than a bouquet of flowers, and Crowley moves on instinct, launching himself at the demon in order to protect his companion.

He hears the distinct crack of bone as Asag’s fist clenches, snapping the vertebrae in Aziraphale’s neck, and before he can even process his rage, his vision goes white as Aziraphale’s wings materialize with a whoosh of cold air.

“Oh, do put me down, you damned brute!” Aziraphale’s wings arch forward, and the winds that the movement creates are enough to blow Asag back a few stumbling feet. As he regains his balance, Ziminiar holds up a hand, indicating he should stay put, and Aziraphale lands softly, pressing two fingers to the side of his neck. There’s another loud series of cracks, and then he shakes his head, bones repaired, range of motion back to normal.

“You’re going to pay for that, you iguana,” Crowley hisses, his own wings bursting behind his shoulder blades and flapping. He’ll take this to the skies, he’ll drag all three intruders back into the earth, but he will make sure they know that Aziraphale is off-limits.

“What in the name of Lucifer is an iguana?” Asag demands.

“Crowley, the humans,” the angel diverts his attention for a moment.

“Right. You three: don’t move,” he orders, and then he follows Aziraphale’s gaze outwards. Although no human has noticed their encounter due to some sort of demonic intervention, Crowley and Aziraphale disperse the blind crowds now. Suddenly, everyone within a three-kilometer radius realizes that they have left the stove on, or forgotten to feed their cat, or that it’s been a long time since they called their parents just to say ‘I love you.’ In less than a minute, a mass exodus of hundreds of humans has occurred, and Hyde Park is eerily silent and devastatingly empty, save for five otherworldly beings, two of them now baring their wings.

“Now that we’ve taken care of any humans in the area, can we please talk about this?” It’s Aziraphale who speaks, guileless as though he didn’t just have his neck snapped. “If you insist on trying to do us harm, or if you threaten this planet and its inhabitants—frankly, if you don’t pack up and leave right now, you’ll be hearing from Upstairs right away! And Crowley here is immune to holy water and therefore quite powerful with your departments! Are you sure you want to invite his ire?”

“Your threats are hollow to me,” Ziminiar replies, and now he takes a step forward. Crowley throws an arm in front of Aziraphale’s chest, urging him back. “If you will not leave, then I will wipe you both out. You’re outnumbered.”

“But you’re outranked,” Crowley snaps, and it’s then that he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a Zippo lighter. “Angel, take this. I think you’ll be able to utilize it better than me.”

Aziraphale looks at the offering in confusion. “Crowley, I don’t smoke recreationally these days.”

“I know that you bloody git, just take it and you’ll understand why I’m offering it to you!”

“Must you instigate your antics right when we’re in the middle of something serious—”

“Aziraphale, for Heaven’s sake, just take the bloody lighter already!”

“Oh, fine,” he relents, reaching out, their fingers brushing. “This hardly warrants you using that tone of voi— _shit!_ ”

Crowley can’t help but smile a bit as the lighter connects with the angel’s hand. Sensing its owner, it returns to its true form, undoing the little miracle that Crowley had placed on it to store for safekeeping.

A large sword, flaming bright as a bar of magnesium, appears in his hand. For just a moment, his arm falters under its weight, but he adjusts in an instant, swinging it up elegantly before he’s finished enunciating the ’t’ in his expletive.

“My sword,” he gasps. “Crowley, how on earth did you—”

“Was part of an agreement I had with some higher-ups,” he replies. He can’t go out and say that it was during his encounter with the Archangels of Heaven, as that would be a terrible thing to reveal to the three goons who are looking at the sword with weariness. But as he’d rubbed his wrists—Aziraphale’s wrists—and promised that he would keep his Hellfire-immune body away from the Pearly Gates as long as no one came snooping on Earth, he’d added one little amendment: he’d wanted the sword back. “I was granted the right to hold onto this, for safe-keeping. Think you’re the better swordsman here, though, so you take it.”

In all honesty, he’d been meaning to give it back to Aziraphale from the moment they’d returned to their respective bodies. But the opportunity had never presented itself, and after the first few days of pleasant shock— _we’re alive! No one is going to harm us! We’re free!_ —it had seemed awkward to broach the topic again.

So he’d kept it tucked away on his person, promising himself that he’d give it back when the time was right.

Too bad nothing feels right about this.

“Typical angel, bringing weapons to a fight,” sneers Marchosias. “You lot are so pretentious. We don’t need swords to wrench you limb from limb, you stupid fluffball.”

“Now, none of that!” Aziraphale speaks, once again letting his tone settle into something firm as his posture becomes statue-like. Crowley has stood before Bernini’s _David_. The power in that stance is undeniable. The air around Aziraphale is quivering with the potential energy bristling between the very atoms of his being. The darkness of the night sky just before lightning forms. “Thank you for this, Crowley. You three have one more chance: please leave. Earth is under our protection. We have stood up to more impressive fiends than you and come out on top, so I doubt you really want to instigate a fight that you will invariably lose—“

And then Ziminiar has let his wings out, and the soot that billows from them sends Aziraphale coughing. Stupid Achilles’ heel, that. He doesn’t need to breathe, shouldn’t have to cough. Yet his was breathing, and now his hand comes up to cover his mouth, his eyes close—

And Ziminiar moves. He doesn’t go for Aziraphale, though: he instead materializes in front of Crowley, rises up into the air and swings his elbow down across his face.

Crowley’s head snaps to the side and pain blossoms across his cheek. He hears a loud snap, wonders if his skull has been cracked. He realizes belatedly that the impact his shattered the arm of his sunglasses, and he watches in a fuzzy, throbbing sort of grief as they careen onto the pavement and shatter.

He owns at least two dozen more. Can miracle a new pair onto his face instantly if he wants. That isn’t the point.

He turns his venom-yellow eyes to his attacker and snarls, incisors growing long and sharp, spine become fluid. “You bastard,” he hisses.

“Let’s kill them now then, shall we?” Asks Ziminiar, catching Crowley’s fist as it flies towards his temple. “Make a mess, boys.”

His two lackeys both go for Aziraphale, but at the moment Crowley is a little caught up in trying to recover his fist from Ziminiar. He opens his wings, hurtles himself upwards, and nearly falls back as Ziminiar follows him, the wind from his own wings displacing air so rapidly that it makes it hard to navigate.

This isn’t like facing Lord Beelzebub. Beelzebub is a demon of composure. They did not often reveal their true nature because their rank alone was enough to intimidate. Similarly, though his temper has always been rubbish, Hastur is another example of a being who kept his strength restrained for the very purpose of self-preservation.

Ziminiar does not hold back. He is reckless and he is in love with the glory of his own abilities. That becomes clear when he extends his wings fully, temporarily blocking out the squintgray sky, and then he’s raining down blows that have Crowley covering his face and wriggling himself into something reptilian so he can better dodge.

Aziraphale holds up considerably better, likely because he has a sword. Also, Crowley grants, because he was conceived of light and love and the single-minded drive to fight for the righteous no matter what: Crowley was originally created to paint the canvas of the universe with stars, Aziraphale was created to be a living weapon.

It’s a good thing that they cleared all the humans away; neither of them would have the heart to deal with casualties as they fight, but damage is unavoidable. Crowley’s ability to twist away from Ziminiar’s blows like a snake earn him enough distance that he can get some air beneath his wings and hurtle himself skywards. When Ziminiar follows him, moving fast, Crowley’s able to land a deft, supercharged kick that sends Ziminiar flying back to earth, across the length of the Serpentine, and straight into the Wellington Arch. His body collides with the quadriga sculpture there, shattering the wings of the bronze angel bearing the laurel branch and sending two of the poor horses careening down onto the pavement below with an almighty crash.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale shouts, not out of concern, but out of annoyance. “You fix that right now! It’s a statue to commemorate peace!"

“I’ll fix it once the murderous demon crawls out of it, alright?” He snarls right back, in no mood for Aziraphale’s fussiness, not when they’re fighting for their lives. “Hey,fancy a trade-off?”

“I’d rather take on two than one,” Aziraphale replies, swinging his sword forth as Marchosias falls to all fours and, showing his true form and coming forth as a sort of wolf-griffin hybrid, goes in for attack. He ends up scampering away as the flames from the sword almost catch against his thick fur. Aziraphale isn’t trying to kill, he’s trying to create distance, same as Crowley. Just as he sets his stance anew, Asag comes rushing forward, and all of the grass around the angel’s feet goes brown then black then sticky, life itself rotting away in revulsion as the demon nears.

Crowley catches the horror in Aziraphale’s eyes, but then Asag is trying to grab a fistful of white wings, and Aziraphale corrects himself, pulls them closer to his body and makes a slow jab with his sword that says loud and clear: _stay back_.

“You can’t keep swinging that around forever,” Asag sneers. “Nor can you point a sword in two places at once.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Marchosias agrees, rebounding and coming from behind the angel. The two demons close in on him at the same time, nails shooting from their fingers like daggers, ready to maim.

“Angel!” Crowley warns, but then any other words are knocked out of him when Ziminiar rushes up from behind, yanking him back up towards the clouds once more. “No!” He struggles in the other demon’s grip, kicking to break free. “Let go, you bastard! I have to go help him!”

But even as he struggles, he looks down and sees that somehow Aziraphale has managed to send both demons flying once again, not a thread out of place on his waistcoat. Relief pours over him like cool water. Aziraphale will be all right.

“Crowley, you insult me,” Ziminiar sighs, putrid breath against his ear. He smells like he’s spent the past few centuries distilling the corpses that litter battlefields into a sort of cologne: the pungent sweetness of death and the sour needleprick of rot. “I thought you would be something more, given your reputation as the holy-water conqueror. I was prepared to battle you for thirty days and thirty nights, until a new moon rose in this sky. You’re nothing but a liar, aren’t you?”

Crowley hates shifting into his demonic form, he really does. The threat of forgetting how to change back has always been enough to cement him to his lankly limbs and pale flesh. But he senses that there is no other way to escape. “All demons are liars, aren’t they?” He asks. “You can’t expect anything else, really.”

He moves then, rearranging the space between his molecules and breaking his cells down, shifting through the phases of matter so fast that even Ziminiar can’t keep a grip on him. Something scaly emerges, something with a spine like a raging jazz solo, all smoke and sunless black and sulfur. As quickly as the dreadful change begins, he reverts to his human form again, now distanced several meters back from his opponent. 

“Still, killing you won’t take more than minimal effort. I’m disappointed that the slaughter I was so looking forward to shall be so brief. You’re below me, so once again, I’ll give you an opportunity, consider it a courtesy from one Fallen soul to another: flee, Crowley. Or you will be destroyed.”

“Very courteous of you,” he agrees with a nod. “But it doesn’t work like that.”

“Oh, swallow your pride for a moment and consider it,” he sighs. “In the meantime, I’m going to eliminate the actual threat here. Asag, Marchosias!”

He careens downward, and the other demons follow him as he crosses the Serpentine and settles on the opposite end of it. Aziraphale, who has held his own so far, stands at the water’s edge, watching them.

Slowly, Crowley descends to land beside the angel. “Something tells me they’re not arguing about the best route back to Hell right now,” Aziraphale says, not taking his eyes off of them.

“Angel, I think they’re going to come for you next. All three of them.”

“Me? Whatever for?”

“Just a hunch,” he answers, wishing he had a weapon right now, something to put distance between himself and his attackers when they next draw near. “So be prepared, understand? You and I need to work together.”

“You sound so tense right now my dear boy,” Aziraphale says, turning to him briefly. It’s like when they chat in the Bentley: quick, stolen glances at one another, then eyes back on the rode, on the world coming towards them at ninety miles per hour. “Crowley…” he holds out his hand then, and the demon rushes to take it before he changes his mind. “We have stood together at Tadfield and faced Armageddon. We have prepared to fight Satan himself to protect Earth. These three will not harm us. Don’t worry.”

“Ngk,” he looks across the water, sees that all three of them are flying back over. The smell hits them first, then the sight of the water bubbling and steaming where black, jagged wings skim the once-sparkling surface of the pond. “I know, angel. Just hate to see my lot putting you out of your way.”

“I’m not afraid of them,” Aziraphale replies calmly. “I just don’t want to hurt them too badly, I suppose. Well, let’s make this quick then. I was hoping we might try the theatre tonight.”

It’s the last thing he has a chance to say before Ziminiar sends the contents of the Serpentine surging forward in a huge wave. Crowley is only just able to make out the sight of all the dead fish in the water, and then the wave crashes down over them both. He knows the angel must have seen the corpses too, knows that as they wince against the fermented water, endure this baptism in Hell’s champagne, that he is likely mourning their loss.

Finally, the wave rolls over them, taking out benches and trees and trash cans, washing the landscape of the park in aquatic gore, in swampy, bubbling ooze. It looks like an oil spill spreading over the pristine grass. 

“Kill him,” Ziminiar orders, hovering above the scene. “Succeed where your own superiors failed: take out that serpent once and for all!”

That’s strange. Crowley chokes on a mouthful of pond water, dives over a fallen tree as Asag lands a punch that splits the trunk in half before his feet have hit the ground. He could have sworn that they would be targeting Aziraphale. The angel’s expression is one of shock as he watches the two demons attack in earnest. Slowly, his features darken. With the understanding that they intend to kill Crowley, something in his countenance shifts, and he lifts his sword, anger sparking from his eyes.

Crowley doesn’t have much time to consider this turn of events because next Marchosias is loping towards him, then he’s dodging another blow from Asag, then another. Then a blur of motion behind him drags his attention in yet another direction.

Oh wait.

Oh, no.

In the zeptosecond that it takes Crowley’s eyes to flicker towards the movement beyond his left shoulder, he becomes aware of several things: Marchosias has managed to get behind him and is attacking; given Marchosias’s size, he is about to be grievously wounded; he is not, however, the main target here; Aziraphale is aware that Crowley is in danger; Aziraphale is about to protect him; and Ziminiar and Asag have planned it that way.

_“No!”_

It feels like it takes a decade to get his lungs to work, to try to warn the angel, and anyway, Crowley knows from the start that he will be too late. His hands shoot out to warn the angel not to pay him any mind, but Aziraphale has already launched forward, Zephyrlike in his speed, flaming sword poised to strike as gale force winds follow in his wake.

A wet, squelchy sound sloshes just behind Crowley’s ear when the sword hits home, and Marchosias snarls in pain. Aziraphale’s eyes are tempest-gray, electric with a fury that Crowley has never felt on him before. The furrow in his brow is canyon-deep, his very aura crackling with an intensity that prickles the demon’s skin like the onset of sunburn. This is the wrath of the First Testament, the Punishment that divine beings are able to dole out according to their own sense of morality. This is a Principality at the height of his strength, God-given weapon in hand, wrathready.

That an angel is prepared to kill for him, _for him_ , is revelatory.

Or it would be, were it not for Asag coming up behind Aziraphale while he’s distracted, planting one hand firmly on the back of his shoulder, and leaning in. He shifts then, embracing something a little closer to his true form, a huge, saliva-dripping maw replacing his humanish face in a blur of motion. His eyes are sewage water green and his teeth are the size of the earliest of spearheads that Crowley once watched mankind learn to fashion from stone. Asag’s jaws snap like an alligator’s around Aziraphale’s left wing and his head swivels back while his arm drives forward.

There is an awful crunch then, a noise that echoes across the hemisphere like thunder, like the sound barrier being broken, like the moment of impact when a schoolbus is t-boned by a drunken driver’s SUV. Spider web of shattered glass. Twirl of steal beams. Shatter of bone. 

The sound chills Crowley in a way he didn’t know he could be chilled, and he watches in horror as Asag shakes his head in a flurry of white feathers, severing Aziraphale’s wing from his shoulder in a jagged, bloody act of blasphemy. Blood arcs as the angel becomes a living fountain, his beloved waistcoat instantly wine-colored, wool meeting gore.

Pain ripples across Aziraphale’s being, his expression going somehow beyond the physical limitations of a human’s face, the lines blurring between his flesh and the air around him for a moment as he shudders with the sensation of being mutilated. And then he screams.

By now, Crowley’s hands are almost upon him, coming in to land upon his chest—he was really going to try shoving him back, away from Asag, wasn’t he?—a movement he feels he initiated several millennia ago. He is the slowest one here, the weakest. Once allowed to hang stars in the sky alongside God’s earliest creations. Now he’s a snake drowning in a pool full of piranhas. Crowley’s own eyes are wide with the horror of it; he feels the angel’s anguish seeping into his own pores. They’re so connected, aren’t they, he muses, that seeing a new expression on Aziraphale’s face, hearing him make a new sound, feels terrifying in its unfamiliarity. He has to grab onto Aziraphale, has to hold him close, wrap his own charred wings around them both for protection and miracle them somewhere far, far away. He’ll get them to safety, he’ll tend to the angel’s wound. He’ll…

It never does come to that, though. Before his hands can land on the solid warmth of the angel’s body, Ziminiar and Asag have used their demonic powers and transported themselves and their captive prize with a flash of light and the smell of sulfur. As quickly as the moment transpired, it ends, leaving Crowley alone, hands clawing through air that still smells faintly of oil of bergamot, of expensive cologne and the sweetness that clings to blooming honeysuckle.

For a second, Crowley can only grasp at the cool negative space where Aziraphale hovered just now: they were almost touching, Crowley was going to…to what? Protect him? When his fingers clench around a few loose feathers that came apart when Asag bit Aziraphale, he screams.

A primal, throat-ripping sound that hurtles out from the base of his spine and splinters off his teeth. He screams and screams and screams and screams.

And when he finally gets the sense to turn around and demand Marchosias tell him where they’ve taken his angel, he finds that he too has already taken off, leaving only a puddle of blood.

Aziraphale is somewhere, wounded, surrounded by three demons.

And Crowley is alone, standing in the plasma-blood-muck where a flaming sword sliced off a demon’s limb, and where a few snowy feathers mark the spot where one of Heaven’s soldiers fell victim to his own selflessness.

He takes a breath to compose himself, and then another. With a shiver of his wings, Crowley focuses all his energy on the spark that he feels whenever he’s near the angel: their bond transcends the five human senses, sure, but those are all still present: the warm, sweet smell of him, almost strong enough that Crowley, with his snakey nose, can taste him, the sound of his wings ruffled up against the little pockets of space and time that he folds them into delicately when on Earth, the warmth of his body, so comforting to Crowley in the miserable winter climates they have spent in one another’s company, that warmth that radiates off his clothes when Crowley sits close enough beside him to perceive it. 

There’s also the sensation of his aura, the soul-soothing comfort he feels when he knows Aziraphale is nearby. It’s a certainty deeper than he’s ever felt before, even more vivid than the memories he has of God’s love, more certain obviously than any allegiance he’s felt towards Hell since Falling. He feels Aziraphale’s presence on an atomic level, like a part of his own being only truly comes to life when the angel stands before him. He is simultaneously the flint against which Crowley’s own ego and ideals rub, sparking disagreement and debate, and the balm that has soothed the demon’s self-imposed isolation on Earth for millennia.

He lost Aziraphale once already. He can remember the despair of not sensing him anywhere on Earth, the reek of the angel’s prized books burning to ash around him as he cursed Heaven and Hell alike. Back then, he had sensed nothing. Assumed the worst. Not this time. If he focuses, he can follow them.

If they’ve dragged Aziraphale all the way to Hell, then he’s likely already dead. But if he had just an ounce of fight in him, if he could hold them off for even just a bit, Crowley reasons, then he can find them and they’ve still got a chance. Thankfully, he knows the angel well enough to know that Ziminiar, Marchosias, and Asag are in for it.

Crowley draws all of his strength, all of the anxiety and rage and fear he has, feels it collecting in his center. He flaps his wings, closes his eyes and thinks of the way Aziraphale’s lips quirk over the rim of a wine glass when he’s trying not to laugh at something Crowley has just said, thinks of his nervous birdlike hands dancing across his lap when he sits on park benches and emotes so effortlessly that his trust makes Crowley want to sob. He thinks of the color of his eyes just now as he looked right past Crowley’s shoulder, prepared to murder in order to protect him. Broiling ocean waves. Capsizing ships. Imminent destruction.

In a flash he’s gone, folding himself through refractions of light and sound waves and bouncing between photons to move through ether, to find Aziraphale.

And to kill their attackers. Slowly. Deliberately. Rapturously.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which one battle ends and another begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay; deadlines at work are making it hard to find time to edit and write! Thanks so much for the supportive feedback on the first chapter! This chapter required me to hack my parent's Amazon account so I could use Prime to re-watch the paintball scene in Episode Two because I had to make sure I was accurately aging Aziraphale's coat. The things we do for fandom...
> 
> Anyway, here's the next installment. Hoping to get the next one up in a week or so! As ever, feedback is highly appreciated! Thank you for reading!

Time and space compress before Crowley when he focuses hard enough, so it’s hard to say how long it takes him to move. He’s only aware of the fact that he’s latched onto Aziraphale’s presence and is following after him, that aura and that comfort getting closer and closer. The flame of the angel’s soul is still glowing brightly. He hasn’t discorporated. The thought occurs to Crowley, and it’s a bit of a surprise, given how serious his injury appeared.

Then again, it was his celestial form, not his human one that was damaged, so perhaps that’s why. Either way, it makes his job that much easier, and Crowley registers that they’re somewhere beyond Gamma Draconis, and therefore very far off-course if the destination was supposed to have been Hell. Aziraphale’s doing, no doubt. Even wounded, he’s managed to derail their attackers remarkably, drawing them out into the cold outreaches of a most elegant constellation. 

Crowley sticks the landing for once, dropping down and instantly ducking into a wave of radiation thrown off by the star, concealing himself temporarily until he can find an opportunity to attack. Typically demons can sense one another easily, even from great distances. And while angels and demons don’t always have the ability to perceive of one another until they’re practically on top of each other, Aziraphale has spent six thousand years learning to recognize Crowley from continents away. However, at this moment, Crowley is well and truly concealed precisely because he wishes to be, and his imagination has never let him down before.

Peering out from his hiding place, he beholds, firstly, a corpse. 

Marchosias drifts by in two halves, his eyes open and glazed, body beginning to smoke and fizzle as he disintegrates. The great fire-breathing monster, famous for his powerful griffin wings, his dreadful wolf howl, the demon who tried to attack him in order to cause a distraction. For attempting to harm Crowley, he has been slain. Now he floats and falls apart into pieces. He isn’t simply discorporating: his very essence has been torn to ribbons, ending his life as abruptly as a bath in holy water would have. Though Crowley has witnessed the death of a fellow demon at his own hands not so long ago, it still chills him to see this display of absolute death.

 _Angel_ , he mouths the word, doesn’t dare say it aloud. He didn’t know Aziraphale really had it in him. And here is the proof that he can murder just as handily as the rest.

When Crowley looks behind the body right in front of him, his heart stops for a moment.

Aziraphale hovers before his two remaining assailants, sword drawn and poised to strike. Although there is something vaguely human-shaped to him, he has opted to reveal his true form. His entire body glows with Heavenly light, and though there is a gap where his left wing once sat, there are dozens more sprouting form his back and neck and head. A gold-hued, slender pair sprouts right below his shoulder blades where his primary wings sit, and still more, lighter-toned ones fold out, like many branches emerging from the trunk of a tree, framing him in the sort of divine symmetry one would expect to see in a creature hand-crafted by the Almighty. Around his head glimmers a halo, throwing rainbows all around in breathtaking arches. His exposed flesh is covered in eyes, the same color as the two Crowley has grown accustomed to catching in public for the past six millennia. They don’t all focus like the two in the center of his face do. Crowley suspects they can probably perceive more than simply what is in front of him. The beams of light are impressive too: extending past his torso and limbs, beams of infrared and ultraviolet eke out, bending into different sigils and shapes, the living manifestation of a language written by God that Crowley no longer speaks.

His is, in a word, terrifying.

He’s also so beautiful that Crowley feels an impulsive urge, an invasive thought, humans are calling them these days, to supplicate himself before the awe-inspiring sight. Though fallen from Heaven and long since abandoned by its light, he still wants to throw himself at this creature’s feet, beg for—for what? Forgiveness? Mercy? A modicum of its ethereal grace?

 _Ethereal_ , that’s the description all right. This is the work of the Divine.

“Stay back, _please_ ,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley could weep he’s so happy to hear him, still strong enough to speak. “I don’t want to do this. Please, don’t make me. Leave now and never come back. I won’t pursue you, you have my word.”

“Oh Principality, you have it all wrong,” sneers Ziminiar. He's hovering back a ways, as is Asag. It doesn't look like they've been here for long, so Crowley must have truly made good time catching up with them. “You ought to start begging for your life. I’m sick of being bound by old rules. I’ve been ready to raze the earth and claim it as my own for millennia. One feisty angel won’t stop me.”  


“I’m no King Solomon,” he angel replies. “I’m not interested in constraining you. Ziminiar, Asag, cease this pursuit of earth and return to your own territory. There is no war, it’s all part of the Ineffable Plan—”

“No,” Asag snarls and lunges, claws and teeth ready to maim. The angel sighs and transports himself behind the demon, who roars in anger. “Stop using that bloody word! You angels are all so condescending!” He turns, tries to strike again, but Aziraphale transports himself again, this time further away. Crowley gets the vague sense of a cat playing with a mouse, not interested in dealing a lethal blow, just toying with a smaller, helpless little life. Asag is having trouble keeping up here.

“Terribly sorry you feel that way,” he quips. “I put in a great deal of effort to stop Armageddon, you see, to ensure the planet’s safety as I suspected its destruction was indeed not ordained by God. I’m afraid it’s not up for discussion: you may not have Earth, plain and simple.”

“You and Crowley both,” Ziminiar sneers,” and Aziraphale’s head inclines in his direction at the mention of that name. “You’re quite dedicated to him, aren’t you? Hear you two really don’t venture apart these days.”

“He’s my friend,” Aziraphale answers shortly, and Crowley feels a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth at the admission. He just said it out loud. To another immortal being, no less. “Like earth and like humanity, I consider him to be under the domain of my protection. So I’d greatly appreciate it if you left him out of all this. Suffice to say I’ll…” his voice falters as he looks in the direction where Marchosias is mostly disintegrated at this point, a bit of vomit-smelling ash, slipping away to corrode the nearest asteroid it lands on. A shadow darkens the angel's features for a second, and the very light that pours from him seems to flicker. “I don’t want to kill again,” he finishes softly, and there are craters between his words, voids of pain that Crowley wants to rush into, to flush out for him. “This is hardly a fair fight. Please don’t make me do that. Just go back to Hell, or find some other corner of the universe to terrorize. I hear Alpha Centuri is lovely this time of year.”

“Not going to happen,” Asag says, lurching forward to invade the angel’s personal space once more. Aziraphale sighs and suddenly disappears yet again. Crowley has seen angels and demons alike move this quickly, but he’s not sure he’s ever seen anyone do it with the effortlessness his angel does. “Quick on your feet considering you’re missing a wing huh?” Asag smirks, sensing that the chase is on, and heads for him again. Same as before, Aziraphale disappears from sight, re-appearing further off, though this time Asag keeps up, practically on him by the time he re-materializes.

“Stop it,” the angel begs, and the flaming sword seems to glow brighter then, as though it can sense his mounting distress. “Please just go away. I don’t want a fight; I promise you won’t be pursued, truly. I’m quite literally begging you to—”

“No, you’re not,” Asag answers darkly, maw growing longer until he resembles a huge lizardlike thing, dripping with venomous saliva. Eldritch terror, abomination, the palpitation of a heart during a nightmare. “But you’re about to be.”

This time, Aziraphale doesn’t try to flee when he lunges. Instead, he glances away, locking eyes with Ziminiar. Crowley realizes with a chill that he’d forgotten about the more quiet demon, a bad move, since he has manifested a huge sword, not flaming like the angel’s, but dripping with something molten. Lava from the depths of Hell? Whatever it is, no doubt it could burn through soft, warm angel flesh easily.

Ziminiar smirks and lunges, sword swinging over his head and then suddenly he’s right there, right on top of Aziraphale at the same time that Asag’s jaws are snapping—

Crowley bites back a scream of terror as the universe itself seems to split just then, light crackling all around them like a sun exploding. When Crowley is able to see again, he finds Aziraphale is holding his own sword up in his dominant hand, crossing it with Ziminiar’s to keep it from coming down and slicing him in half. The blades hiss where they touch, hellfire sizzling against whatever holy flame it is that ignites from the angel’s weapon.

His left hand has punched straight through Asag’s head, fist entering below an eye socket; the demon’s entire face crumples as his skull fractures a thousand times over under the clench of the angel's fingers.

“I really did warn you,” the he says reproachfully. And then the lightening is back, coursing through his hand and charring Asag, who wails as he is fried from the brain out to the tips of his scaley wings and tail. It takes longer for him to die than seems fair. Then, finally, the cries subside and Aziraphale pulls his bloody, lightening bolt-flickering hand out of the corpse, turning his full attention to Ziminiar. “And you, would you like to die as well?”

Ziminiar smiles, but it looks a little forced. “Was beginning to wonder whether or not you were a real Principality,” he admits. “You looked so pathetic on earth in your chubby little fleshsuit.”

“I was hand-crafted by the Almighty to be a soldier for Heaven,” he replies. “If you expected anything less, that’s your own presumptuousness getting the better of you. Best not to speculate before one has proper empirical data…ah, but I doubt you’ve read much _Sherlock Holmes_ , right? Well, don’t judge a book by its cover, as it were—”

The demon doesn’t answer; he spits a ball of flame at the angel, who flinches out of the way, a fraction too slow at recovering, because before he can regain his footing, Ziminiar is behind him, kicking him between the shoulder blades where the gaping wound that was once a wing is still bleeding.

The angel gasps in pain, spinning around just in time to get a face-full of sword. Ziminiar’s blade catches him just below the eye, slicing his cheek and sending a new spray of blood down onto the angel’s already-ruined jacket. Swinging blindly, he manages a messy parry, and regains some footing, sending a new bolt of electricity coursing forward, though Ziminiar engulfs himself in a ball of flame and endures the worst of the shock with little more than a grimace.

“You’ll have to come up with something new, Principality. I've seen your little light tricks now. Don't you see that you can't stop me? I’ll bring your corpse back to earth just to see that idiot Crowley cry. Then I’ll dismember him too.”

“I’ve already told you to leave him out of this,” he snaps, voice sinking deep, dark. “ If you insist on threatening Crowley, then I really do have no choice but to ensure that you never step foot on Earth or Hell again.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Ziminiar snaps, such a typical, prideful demon.

“You should be,” Aziraphale says, and flaps his wings, still more unfolding around him. His halo seems to glow just a bit brighter then. “I’m about to drag you into the center of the nearest star and hold you there until every last molecule is burnt to a crisp.”

For the first time, Aziraphale strikes first, lunging forward. Ziminiar parries the strike of his flaming sword, spits a ball of fire that the angel sinks down to avoid, and just like that, they’re fighting in earnest, both of them grappling to get the upper hand. Their limbs are blurs and the sound of their swords striking creates shockwaves that bounce against nearby stars. The rings on a planet several lightyears away start to tilt. The moons another planet reverse their rotations as a result of the waves of energy bouncing around.

Ziminiar becomes less focused on attacking and more desperate to put distance between them. For just a moment, Crowley allows himself to hold out hope that it’s because he recognizes that he’s lost, that Aziraphale is going to kill him if he doesn’t surrender. Then, once he’s forged a nice distance between himself and the angel, he reels back, and Crowley, who knows innately the coiling back before the cobra strike, who can smell the chemical reactions catalyzing in the vacuum of space before he sees the first flame form, knows he has to get between them immediately.

So he comes out from hiding and pulls his favorite hat trick: he stops time.

It’s a little harder here, where time is much less of a concrete concept than it is on Earth, so heavily steeped in human conception and philosophy. There are no equations out here to illuminate the trajectory of space in a neat little chart that humans can track: it is a rhythm, an erratic pulse. But of course he pulls it off. The lackadaisical sway of the angel’s wings, sheets hung up on a clothesline on a summer’s day. Ziminiar’s mighty exhale, the huge mouthful of Hellfire he is about to split off of his jagged teeth.

Crowley flies forward, losing control of time as soon as he grabbed it in his panic. He has just enough momentum to wrap his wings around Aziraphale, angle himself so that his back is to the enemy, and then he hears the rip of flame behind him, the crisp ring of devastation as it hits the backs of his wings.

It burns, of course it burns.

Like stepping into a too-hot shower. But the point is that it doesn’t kill him the way it would have annihilated the angel, who could not have seen the attack coming as he has no nose for Hellfire versus the usual flames most demons can shoot from their fingertips at will.

Ziminiar, it turns out, has a few decent tricks yet. He’s stronger than they gave him credit for.

“C-Crowley?” Aziraphale looks at him in disbelief. “What are you doing here? What’s—”

“Angel,” he rasps, gutted by the alarm on his companion’s face. “Don’t move. If you move, you die."

The blackness of empty space is illuminated for a few more seconds as the flames continue to lick oilslick black feathers, and in the flicker of light, they stare at each other in mutual terror. Finally, realizing that his all-powerful attack was misplaced, Ziminiar flies back with a scoff.

“Two against one, hm? I suppose that’s my cue,” he says, eyes flicking from the angel to Crowley and back. “Hadn’t planned on that. Very well; we’ll meet again.”

And he curls his huge, terrible wings around himself, suddenly throwing off so much heat and energy that the angel cries out and flutters back a ways. Crowley’s wings lurch forward to shield him from the worst of the heat once more. With a whoosh strong enough to scatter the contents of a nearby asteroid belt, Ziminiar disappears, returning to Hell, no doubt.

“No!” Aziraphale rushes over to where the demon had just hovered, choking a bit on the smell of sulfur. “Damn!”

“Angel,” Crowley croaks, staggering towards him. “It’s over. Leave that bastard. Let me look at your wound, come here. Go—Sata— _whoever_. C’mere,” he motions for Aziraphale to turn around and expose his back, so he can inspect it. He realizes, only once his hands are in front of him, that they’re shaking. “That was…I thought you were. _Shit_.” For the second time, he's almost lost Aziraphale to flame. That this is becoming a pattern in life is incomprehensible.

“Oh Crowley,” the angel breathes. “No. No, no, no. You weren’t supposed to see this. Oh good lord, you weren’t supposed to see me like this.”

“It’s okay,” Crowley insists. “It’s okay, angel. Thought they’d taken you away from me. ‘M just…just glad you’re not…anyway come here. Let me miracle us back to your shop so I can clean you up. Please.”

“No,” he whispers, flinching away when the demon’s hands try to settle on his shoulders. “No, you weren’t supposed to…I…”

“Angel, what’s wrong?” he asks, finally close enough to touch Aziraphale purposefully for the first time in what feels like eons, and hurt so fucking deeply that he’s being denied that privilege. Now that they’re standing this close to one another, so he can feel the heat of the angel’s body, see the way blood is drying across his face, the yearning to actually feel the solidity of his form is almost maddening. The angel once hovered in front of him, incorporeal, ghostlike, in a dingy bar. It had been awful. He’s real now. Why won’t he let Crowley touch him? Reading his desperation, responding to his panic with rising panic of his own, the angel is pulling back more fully, wings folding into himself, halo fading to a dull glow, eyes disappearing as his pale skin becomes smooth once again. Resuming his mostly-human form.

His lips tremble as he looks for the words he wants to say, eyes flicking everywhere except for Crowley’s own. “I…I need some time alone, my dear,” he says. “Go back to Earth, Crowley. It’s not safe out here. I’ll, I’ll meet you back, there, okay?”

“Time alone? After I watched you get mutilated? Think again, angel.”

“Crowley,” he breathes, and his eyes are so broken. His face is still bleeding. So is his back: the demon can see the red stain spreading from his shoulder around the front of his shirt, dribbling down the curve of his spine. “Please. I need to be alone. Just…oh, I’m dreadfully sorry, I’ll see you in a bit, all right?”

“Wait—”

It’s too late. The angel turns on his heel and hurtles himself through the ether. With a cry, Crowley leaps after him, a jackknife into the liquid of space and time. He’s not doing this again. He’s not letting them get separated. Not. Fucking. Again.

But it’s not so simple. Even in his injured state, Aziraphale is faster than him. The chase, by Crowley’s estimation, stretches on for several Earth days. Each time he feels himself getting close enough to call out to the angel, he just rushes off even faster. They pass Alpha Centuri, stumble over the Horsehead Galaxy, out further, to domains that Crowley is not nearly as familiar with. There are less stars out here, less signs of anything, as though God, in Her infinite wisdom, paused for a second to gather Her thoughts, and forgot to come back to these corners of the universe. He’s never been this far away from starlight, her light. Any light.

Otherworldly or not, Crowley and Aziraphale do have limitations. As their universelong chase carries on, Crowley can sense that he’s nearing the end of his strength. It’s like running a marathon: he’s hit a wall, and the effort it requires to propel himself through space, to keep himself honed in to the aura of his angel, it’s becoming too much of an effort. He wants to sleep. He wants to collapse into his bed, maybe even drink some water, which he has declared too boring and gross for his tastes since the advent of juices and wine coolers. He wants to curl up into a ball and to recover from the strain it’s putting on his supernatural body. He doesn’t even want to think about what it’s going to feel like when he hits Earth again, has to feel the effects of what this ordeal has put on his corporeal form.

Thankfully, he’s not the only one who’s starting to get tired. It’s less of a strain to keep pace with Aziraphale, even as his energy gives out: the angel is starting to slow down too. Desperate and afraid and at the limits of his emotional capacity, Crowley presses ahead, focusing in on the brightness he can sense that tells him the angel is fairly close; at least within the nearest solar system.

“Aziraphale!” he screams, knowing full well that he’s being heard. “Stop it already before you kill yourself, you idiot!”

The angel stops moving for the first time in several days. It’s a small blessing.

“Come back with me. Please, angel,” his voice cracks. He pulls the sympathy card, not certain it will work. “I’m exhausted. I can scarcely get back myself. Come with me. I can clean up your wing, make sure it doesn’t get infected. You can make tea. Look, those bastards are gone, alright? You don’t have to worry about that. We need to take a moment to take stock. I know that was traumatizing just now, who wouldn’t be traumatized? But you can’t keep flitting out to the edge of the universe. I want to go home with you. Please, come home with me.”

“Crowley.” He hears the angel’s voice in his head, more than with his ears. He holds still, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t risk saying anything stupid that will get him into more trouble, that will make his friend tense up and fly off again. Then, by some miracle: “Oh, very well.”

He appears right in front of Crowley then, glowing very faintly, preparing for one last transport. Deep down, the demon is certain that he too wants to return home, however agitated he is. Aziraphale holds his hands out and the demon takes them without question, letting him do this, letting him bring them back to earth. He could probably do it, he thinks, but he’s too relieved to have his angel beside him once more to argue. Anyway, one more burst of strength might be what it takes to knock the angel out on his feet, to leave him pliant enough to be maneuvered into a chair where Crowley can then tend to his wounds. The warmth of his palms against the demon’s are magnificent, as is the strength with which his fingers lace between Crowley’s and squeeze. He’s been hand-crafted by God, imbued with soul-deep purpose: despite all he’s endured, he’s still so strong, so alive. Beings like them don’t have the luxury of collapsing so easily after these sorts of ordeals.

When he transports them, it’s more gently than how Crowley does it. He isn't rushing, and there's no doubt in his mind that he's going to cock it all up somehow. Instead, he’s trying so conscientiously not to jostle the demon. He is focused on the vivid image of his bookshop, and that is where they head in the blink of an eye. They land with a heavy thud, both staggering in dizziness. “Quite sorry,” Aziraphale quips, reaching out and supporting himself on a sturdy bookshelf. “That was a rather sloppy landing.”

“Not at all,” Crowley answers, falling forward to lean heavily over his desk. “More graceful’n I would’ve been.” He actually pants for a few moments, greedy with the prospect of being able to pull oxygen into his lungs again. Fresh air whooshing into his body does wonders for the head rush their miracle has given him, and he lets his forehead rest on the desk, smells the cloying, sweet smell of a mug of cocoa that the angel has left there amongst open books. A week ago (has it been a week? A few days?), he had no doubt left his shop to spend time with Crowley, intending to return in a few hours to his literature, his paperwork. Being surrounded by these items brings calm and resolve back to the demon. They’ve made it back. They’re safe. A precursory glance out the window suggests that it’s likely late afternoon, a frigid-looking precipitation is falling steadily and the sun has begun its late-autumn about-face, retreating into the horizon and knocking the gold of twilight out of the sky in its haste.

“Oh dear,” the angel finally pushes himself off the bookshelf and stands on his own two feet, shaky hands ghosting over the lapels of his jacket. Crowley tilts his head to watch him without getting up from his semi-recumbent position. “Oh _dear_.” He takes in the ruined condition of his beloved wardrobe, the bloodstains and the rips. His face falls into something that reminds Crowley of when he nannied young Warlock, of the boy’s face when he broke a beloved toy or dropped his ice lolly on the sidewalk: the moment of miserable realization right before tears. Of course, the angel doesn’t cry. As quickly as the devastated look crosses his face, he schools it into a more neutral expression. Stiff upper lip and all that. “Well, what can you do?” he murmurs, and with a snap of his fingers, his coat, waistcoat, and jacket have all been removed so that only his button-up shirt remains.

“I can miracle away the stains on your clothes,” Crowley offers.

“Best not,” he demurs. “I’d remember the stains and how I got them. I just dropped them off in an incinerator in Manchester.”

“Pity, you’ve had that coat for…what, a hundred and fifteen years now?”

“One hundred and eighteen to be precise,” he corrects. Crowley knew that, but the clarification proves that whatever shock Aziraphale is in has not clouded his mind too deeply. “I purchased it from a very kind tailor who was closing up shop on Fleet Street. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You look quiet out on your feet, dear boy. Can I make you a cup of tea, or would you like to sleep? I know you’re perfectly comfortable on the couch, but I do also have a bed upstairs if you’d rather—”

“Oi, I’m not going to bed until you’ve given me a chance to look at those wounds.”

The angel’s mouth twitches. “I’d quite prefer it if you didn’t.”

“Don’t really care,” he sniffs, standing upright and striding across the room to loom over his companion. “It’s been _days_ , angel. Your face is still bleeding. Something’s up.”

“Now Crowley, I’m capable of taking care of myself. So would you please be so kind as to step back and—”

The demon ignores him, lifting a hand to lightly touch the gash below his eye. The angel flinches away so violently it’s as though he’s been slapped, a gasp hitching in his throat as he flattens himself against the bookshelf behind him. Crowley drops his hand, eyebrows shooting up in alarm. He has never elicited such a fear-filled response from the angel, not even when he’s tried to in the past.

“Please don’t touch me.”

“Angel?”

A heavy silence falls between them, and the taller man steps back, head reeling. This kind of rejection is new and the last thing that he expected.

“Oh, dearest, don’t look at me like that,” the angel pleads, raising his hands, though with no intentions of touching his friend. They hover uselessly in the space between their bodies, pale placeholders marking the distance between their beating hearts. “I…I’m dreadfully sorry for my behavior. It’s just. You weren’t supposed to see that. To see me like that. Good heavens, I never wanted to…”

“Your true form?” he asks. “Angel, you didn’t frighten me. I was honored to see it, really. Bit scarier than I would have expected, sure, but the eyeballs and the wings were pretty, er…well, you don’t like horror movies, but I mean it as a compliment when I saw Guillermo del Toro would be inspired by you: really that’s high praise—”

“That wasn’t my true form,” he sighs. “Close to it, but that wasn’t quite…anyway, that’s not even what I was referring to. Crowley, I ki— _I took the life_ —permanently—from those two demons.” His eyes grow wet, tears hovering on his lower lashes and not quite falling over.

“That’s what’s got your knickers in a twist?” he asks. “Yeah, they earned it. They attacked us. You were defending earth. And yourself. And…” his heart lurches, “me.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t alter the fact of the matter, I still—oh,” he stumbles a little, leaning back into the bookshelf once again. He looks so pale that the demon suddenly fears that he might pass out, which would be a first, to the best of his knowledge. He didn’t know they were capable of doing that. Crowley steps in, aware that he’s invading Aziraphale’s space, but not caring. He holds him gently by the upper arms, forcing their eyes to meet. “I never did that before,” he whispers, a few tears coming loose and trickling down his cheeks. 

“Never even stepped on a spider, eh angel?” The image of a stiff dove comes to mind, but then, he knows that hadn’t been intentional. And he’d miracled its life back, hadn’t he?

More tears fall down his face. Crowley watches their journey for a while before he realizes that he isn’t wearing sunglasses, and then rapidly keeps his eyes up on Aziraphale’s, kicking himself for his stupidly. 

“What have I become? Since Armageddon, everything has changed. I’ve become a monster.”

“Don’t say that!” he snarls. “You didn’t start that fight! Those bastards were threatening to raze the planet we just busted our arses trying to save! They used me as bait. And you warned them! You were in every right to—”

“There is no moral excuse for total annihilation,” he insists in a sharp whisper.

“I’m not hashing out a fucking moral quandary with you when you’re bleeding all over your bookshop. Sit down. I’m cleaning your wounds whether you like it or not. Then, I’m going to sleep for about twenty hours. And if you still want to debate whether you were in the right to slay those idiots when I wake up, maybe I’ll humor you. Sound like a plan?”

Aziraphale glowers at him, haughty even as his eyelashes clump together wetly and his nose runs. The universe could be imploding around them and he’d still manage to give Crowley his childishly peeved expression. After a moment’s pause, he’s able to stand straight again, and heads over to a nearby stool, sitting down with his back to the demon.

“Well then? Can you give me a modicum of effort?” He asks in exasperation. 

The right wing unfurls, the tips of his feathers smacking Crowley lightly. Not enough to hurt, but enough to make clear that he’s upset with him and very well _could_ hurt him, if he had the energy. His churlishness is something that has alternately delighted and infuriated Crowley since they met, and his mood usually hinges upon whether he’s bearing witness to it, or bearing the brunt of it. 

The demon sighs and steps closer, inspecting the damage. His right wing, while not wounded, is a mess. His feathers are in desperate need of a good grooming, and the temptation is strong to reach into the soft down along his shoulder blade and to smooth some of it, to feel the plush heat and to coax the smallest of the feathers into place. 

Instead, Crowley forces himself to turn his attention to the left wing. Without removing his shirt, the angel has allowed a small miracle; Crowley can see right through the back of the shirt as though it were translucent. He’s also able to reach down and touch skin, fingers magically moving right past the fabric. It’s like dipping one’s fingers into a crystalline tide pool to touch the sand below.

It’s catastrophic. The flesh over his shoulder blade has been rubbed off by the sandpaperlike scales of Asag. The cartilage and bone that support the base of the left wing have been severed clean through; there’s marrow visible at the tip, and when the demon really leans in, looks with vision beyond what his corporeal body can see, he can see venom clinging to bone, smears of it. It has the faintly burnt, faintly sulfuric smell of Hell, but it’s also something Crowley doesn’t quite recognize. A magic distinct to Asag, no doubt. Something he’s had centuries to hone. Even a nibble from his venomous teeth would no doubt kill a human instantly, and it might explain why Aziraphale’s ability to heal has been so delayed.

The sight of the angel’s pained face, the sound of his scream, flit through the demon’s memory as he touches the heated skin around the wound, and he holds his breath as he focuses his intentions and summons a demonic miracle with a snap of his fingers.

Nothing happens. The wound does not heal; the venom does not dissipate; the skin around the shoulder blade remains raw and lymph-damp and bloody.

“Can’t miracle a new wing for me?” Aziraphale deadpans. “Not surprised.”

“I don’t think it did any good at all. Never seen anything like this,” he admits, trying again, out of sheer stubbornness. A second snap. Again, there is no relief. If anything, the sound makes Aziraphale curl in further on himself, tense up all the more under the demon’s scrutiny. 

“Well, thank you for trying.”

“Looks like it could get infected. So much inflammation. Guess that’s the human part of you reacting,” he says softly. “Gonna try and wash it with a cloth, okay? So I’ll be touching it, but gentle-like. You with me?”

He wants so desperately to ask how badly it hurts.

“I appreciate it, my dear,” he says with a clipped tone.

The demon miracles a basin with warm soapy water and a plush washcloth, dipping it in the water and wringing it out. Then slowly, slowly, he brings it up to the angel’s skin and presses lightly.

Aziraphale yelps, right wing jolting out and sending a display case of first edition Vincent Millays scattering to the floor.

“Sorry, sorry!” Crowley snaps his fingers and is holding a glass of brandy, which he passes forward quickly. “Should’ve thought of this first.”

“No, _I’m_ sorry,” he says, taking the glass and draining it. Crowley refills it instantly. “I’ll tidy up those books in just a moment.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll get it later. Have another drink, angel. I’ll make this quick. There’s goop in the bone that I’d like to wash out. Then I’ll clean your cheek as well.”

“I trust you.”

Those words make his heart lurch in his chest, and he can’t think of anything else to say. They both fall silent as Crowley continues to clean, then disinfect the wound to the best of his abilities. The angel flinches each time he’s touched, biting back little whimpers that shatter Crowley subatomically. Eventually, he manages to secure a little gauze to the bare bone and to the hole in his back, hoping that the pressure will encourage the angel’s body to heal faster, to stop this miserable ooze of blood and marrow and just snap back to normal the way it’s supposed to.

“There we are,” he praises, stroking the messiness of the angel’s right wing, fingers snagging in bent and unruly feathers. “Wing’ll probably heal back by tomorrow. You’ll be a perfectly symmetrical bastard by breakfast.”

He responds with a smile that scarcely clears his mouth, and Crowley cups his face gently as he tends to the gash on his cheek, avoiding eye contact, unable to bear the sight of his globe-colored irises so tight with agony. Instead, he keeps the glass of brandy full, encouraging Aziraphale to get drunk, hoping it will numb him somewhat. The clinking of a single large ice cube against the glass and the soft, pained inhales of breath are all that can be heard. Each time he exhales a harsh sigh, his breath coasts over Crowley’s wrist, a specter of their shared fear.

Once Crowley finishes patching the smaller wound up and goes to pull away, the angel presses the half-drunk glass to his lips before he can draw back and the demon freezes, heart hammering at the intimacy, at the raw impropriety of the gesture, an angel pressing the lip of a glass to his mouth, the rim warm from where his own mouth had rested on it. Still, he does not draw away as he meets the angel’s blurry gaze. Aziraphale tilts the glass slightly, so he parts his lips, lets the angel guide mouthful after mouthful of burning liquor down his throat. When the glass is empty, the angel taps his finger against the rim and it disappears, maybe appearing in the sink in his tiny kitchen off the back of the bookshop. Maybe it joins his clothes in the incinerator in Manchester. 

“Thanks. Probably did need that.”

“Of course you did.”

Brandy as olive branch: for their little tiff, they have both agreed to forgive one another.

Finally gathering inertia, Crowley stands, offers a hand to the angel, clearing his throat as the liquor continues to sting, and pulls him to his feet.

“I want to sleep,” he says simply. “I’m exhausted. You should try to sleep too.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agrees, “perhaps I shall.”

“But I’m not leaving you, not for the next decade at least, angel. So is it alright if I take the couch?”

“Don’t be silly; you can take my bed, of course. This isn’t just a casual evening visitation: you’ve had quite the scare.” he sees the demon’s hesitation. “Please, I never use my bed anyway. You can have it; you’ll be putting it to proper use for once.”

Caring for Crowley seems to give him something to focus on, to snap him out of his discomfort a bit, because he starts bustling about then, fixing the display case with a wave of his hand and motioning for the demon to follow him upstairs.

“I thought you said you were going to try to sleep too,” he objects. “Sort of impossible if I’m in your bed.”

Unless they slept in the bed together.

The thought brings color to his cheeks, which he forces down through sheer force of will. A few sips of brandy and he’s out of control: it must be the emotional exhaustion speaking.

“I doubt I’ll really be able to sleep much if I’m being perfectly honest. You know very well that it’s not a preferred pastime of mine. Really, you’ll benefit more from this than I would. If I’m feeling restless, I’d rather be able to move about the shop, tend to my books. Make tea. You know how I enjoy these everyday comforts, Crowley. Besides, I haven’t seen to my manuscripts in so many days now; there’s a lot I have to catch up on.”

“But—”

“Now Crowley,” he has successfully led the demon up the stairs into the bedroom that Crowley has never seen. He opens the door and allows the demon inside.

The room is underwhelming. Unlike the shop downstairs, so packed with novelties and displays and obvious passion for its very essence of stuff-ness, the bedroom is plain with cream-colored walls, unadorned with paintings or shelves, and a full-size bed with a light blue quilt that looks like something that would be displayed in a museum. The absence of books or reading glasses or saucers for teacups on the bedside table leads the demon to doubt that the room has ever gotten any use. It’s ornamental, here because Aziraphale thinks that it should be here, not because he actually has any desire to sleep or use a bedroom or curl up under the covers for a week or two, just to pass the time in peace and quiet.

“I must insist,” the angel continues. And if there had been other words, he’s missed them, too taken aback by the dual emotions coursing through him. On the one hand, he’s touched that the angel is baring his bedroom to him: used or not, the gesture feels absurdly intimate. On the other hand, seeing the room shows him just how little the space really means to Aziraphale on a personal level, informing him that he should not feel touched at all. “You’ve been through quite enough these past few days. You were very nearly…” his eyes darken as he looks away for a moment, lips continuing to work although words fail temporarily. “You were nearly hurt quite badly. Knowing that you’re able to rest and recover, it would make me feel much better. And perhaps in the morning we can take stock and discuss what to do from here on out.”

“Alright, alright,” he agrees, stalking towards the bed. “You don’t have to twist my arm to get me to kip. Though these will have to change.” He snaps his fingers and the sheets shiver, turning silken and black. The pillows fluff up, becoming more luxuriant. “But before I knock out, let’s make something clear. I may have almost been hurt, but you actually _were_. Badly. Angel, promise me you’ll relax a little so you can heal properly?”

“I’ll do everything I can,” he answers, evasive as ever.

“I’ll be right up here. If you need anything, even if you just get scared, say my name and I’ll be beside you. Do you understand?” He snaps his fingers, and a pair of sunglasses appear on the bedside table for him to don upon waking. Perhaps it’s his imagination, but he almost sees something rueful in the way the angel regards them.

“Yes.”

“Well then,” he yawns. “I’ll see you in the morning, will I?”

Aziraphale smiles weakly. “Take as long as you need. Don’t feel like you have to wake up tomorrow on my behalf. If you keep it under a century, I’ll be happy.”

What he wants to say is something about how it’s all he can bear to fall asleep. Were his mind not shutting down on him, a natural defense mechanism to handle the stress he’s under, he would stay awake and glued to the angel’s side. Aziraphale will be lucky to leave his apartment alone for any sort of chore within the next decade. Crowley absolutely does not want to be apart from him, and so sleeping in his bed in his apartment, with the shop right below is just barely suitable. 

He can’t bring himself to say any of it though, so he just makes a sort of grunt and falls face-first into the blankets. Even though the angel never sleeps in the bed, it still sort of smells like him, perhaps because Crowley would like for it to.

“Get some rest, my dear boy. I’ll be right downstairs if you need anything.”

And that’s how they part ways, Crowley crawling under the covers and falling into a deep, dreamless sleep, and Aziraphale slipping downstairs, avoiding the creaky steps so as not to disturb the demon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back on Earth, Crowley makes some terrifying realizations and Aziraphale begins to withdraw into himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in getting this chapter out! Hopefully the next one will be a little longer and weightier. In the meantime, have some necessary plot! As ever, thank you so much for reading! :D Feel free to swing by [Tumblr](https://supposed2bfunny.tumblr.com) to say hi!

Sleeping, it turns out, is a wonderful idea for Crowley’s corporeal form. His body truly had been pushed to its limit, and to let it rejuvenate feels decadent. Still, flashes of hellfire and splashes of thick blood scuttle through his mind’s eye like so many gnats on a summer’s night, and he jolts awake some time less than twenty-four hours later, breathing quickly, the image of Aziraphale backlit by a ball of flame sending explosions of panic through his nervous system. It takes a few moments to orient himself, to remember that Aziraphale is alive and safe and right downstairs, yes, he can sense him.

If he listens closely, Crowley can hear the stovetop clicking as the angel shuts it off. He’s making tea then. Idly, he wonders what kind, and flicks a forked tongue out to scent the air. Oil of bergamot. Earl Gray then. Good choice, he always loved that kind himself. Splash of milk and you have yourself the taste of England. Almost as authentic as sticking a straw in a puddle on the side of the street, and a great deal less gritty, too. Plus the angel has spent centuries perfecting the art of making the perfect cup of tea. Next to booze in all its varieties, tea brewed and served by Aziraphale is one of his favorite things to taste on earth. 

For just a moment, Crowley allows himself to luxuriate. He stretches all four limbs out, grunting as joints crack and muscles ache. He’s pushed himself too far and he’ll be sore for days, no doubt. He could miracle the pain away to some extent, but this is the result of a strain that is not merely physical. The wear and tear on his body is just a side effect, spillover from dipping into reservoirs of occult power to dart about the universe the way he did. After six thousand years sitting around eating desserts and sipping wine on cushy armchairs with Aziraphale, he realizes that his previous energy expenditure isn’t something his body—supernatural and corporeal—is able to do much anymore. It’s distressing to realize that their superiors—Beezelbub, Hastur, Gabriel certainly, and even sodding old Sandalphon—are probably much stronger in that regard, having been preparing for war. In order to keep Earth safe, he might have to consider a sort of training regiment. Somewhere down the line…

It doesn’t matter. For now, he’ll stay at the bookshop, drink tea, recover. And come up with a plan of action with his angel.

He wonders, nuzzling his cheek into a silky pillowcase, how much the angel has healed up: will his wing be back to its former glory, or will it be ratty, missing feathers? It’ll take a real effort on his part not to laugh if the newly-sprouted wing if it isn’t quite up to its full potential after a single day. For just a moment, he entertains the thought of asking to preen those lovely white wings. It’s a thought he’s had before. Since Eden, really, when he first beheld them. A beam on sunlight striking the eastern wall, which had turned out to be a trick of his newly-demonic eyes. It hadn’t been sunlight, it had been an angel clad in white. And when he’d dared to slither closer to get a better look, he’d become quite awe-struck. Even back then, he’d been blown away by the delicate beauty of those wings: Aziraphale seems largely unaware of the effect he has on Crowley as far as his appearance is concerned, but the Almighty had certainly been generous, giving him an elegance that few other angels seem to posses. 

Something about not being vain or prideful prevents their ilk from putting too much concern into their bodies,; interesting, that an angel who would willingly get thrown into the Bastille for refusing to alter his fine, filly cravats and waistcoats would accept such human levels of vanity while continuing to abstain from more ethereal preening. But then, has always been a bastardly mix of contradictions in his attempts to fly below Heaven’s radar. And like any other otherworldly creature who spends most of his time stuffing his wings into pockets of space and time, he has a rather messy set of feathers. Crowley sighs, his body feeling warm and fuzzy at the mere thought of the angel sitting still, allowing Crowley to tend to him, not the way he had the previous day, hurting him as he tried to assess his wounds. This would be different, he tells himself. Pleasurable.

It’s when he realizes that his face feels hot with blood that he knows it’s time to stop daydreaming like a love-struck teenager and get up. He jerks out from the tangle of sheets, and with a snap of his fingers, the bed is made once again, restored to its ugly quilt and age-flattened pillows. A moment later, his sunglasses sit on his nose. As Crowley runs his hands down the front of his nightshirt and it miracles into day clothes, he likes to think that the angel’s scent is now lingering on his skin. It’s a good way to start the day.

Any positive thoughts are dashed as he makes his way downstairs and instantly feels the chill of the dark aura emanating from the angel. When he walks into the bookshop, he finds Aziraphale sitting at his desk, chin in his hand, gazing out the window at the rain lashing against the glass. His tea is steaming, untouched, before him, and the desk is completely covered in huge, heavy tomes, opened to various pages. The angel doesn’t seem to be the least interested in reading though.

“Still hurting, angel?” Crowley asks, striding across the room.

He nearly jumps out of his chair, eyebrows racing up his forehead and hands flying away from his face to flutter over the desk. “Oh, Crowley! Good morning! Would you like some tea? I have that brand of Earl Grey that you fancy—”

“Never-mind that. Your cheek,” he points. “Still looks like it just did that last night. Wing still gone too then? Let me see.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Don’t be daft. You let me tend to you yesterday; let me tend to you now.”

“Really, my dear boy, I’m fine. I just need a bit more time to recuperate is all. Give me another couple of days and I’ll be able to pang-wangle through this little hiccup. Spic and span, neat as a new pin, perfectly composed, —”

“Tickety-boo?” he guesses, disappointed when Aziraphale doesn’t smile, only nods. 

“Precisely!”

“But…” he’s not pouting. Demons don’t pout. Still, he knows he looks rather petulant from the curious and then exasperated expression he’s receiving. 

“What?”

“You’re clearly hurting.”

The pain emanates from him as heat emanates from infected flesh. There’s a divot between his eyes that only comes out when he’s deep in concentration or hearing news of a preferred bakery going out of business. His plush lips are pursed and he’s…his aura feels somehow dimmer to Crowley. Whereas normally Aziraphale is an unconscious streetlamp, making anyone who stands close enough to bask in his unseen light feel safe, it’s as though a bulb has blown. He gives off less vivacity than the average human. He’s also not meeting Crowley’s eyes. Their eye contact has always been fleeting between the demon’s own self-consciousness over his serpentine features and the angel’s fidgety behavior, but now he’s not getting any connection. 

Crowley has the distinct impression that he’s drowning in a stormy sea, calling out to Aziraphale who sees him, but can’t seem to find a rope to throw in his direction. 

“Just a little residual soreness from yesterday’s excursions,” the angel assures him, wetting the tip of his finger and turning the page in one of his more modern-looking texts. “Some more rest and I’ll be fine. Please dear, don’t worry and fix yourself some breakfast if you like. I’m happy to make you tea.”

“You haven’t put your glasses on,” he accuses.

“What?”

“Your reading glasses.”

“Oh, yes. Well—” he fumbles around the desk until he finds them, the stupid, functionless things that look ridiculous but have enthralled the angel since he bought them over a century ago.

“You’re not alright, angel, not in the least. You’re not acting yourself,” he strides over to stand behind his friend, who instantly turns in his chair, though Crowley stops him with a hand to his good shoulder. “Let me see.”

“Crowley, unhand me please. I want a little space.”

“I’m not going to hurt you. Never have. You know that. Why won’t you just let me see?”

“Because it’s… _shameful _, my dear boy.”__

____

____

“Shameful? What’s shameful about what’s happened to you?” He demands, desperate to understand. “You were the dashing hero. Sword and everything, angel. The only cock-up over this whole ordeal is that I wasn’t the one to throw Asag’s head into one corner of the universe and his body into another.”

The hand on the angels’ shoulder rubs soothingly. Beneath his shirt, he can feel Aziraphale’s muscles taught with nerves and misery and pain. It’s worse up close, like the man’s upright posture is an optical illusion: he really gives the impression of someone curled up in a tight fetal position. A few muscles are actively spasming where his wings protrude from his shoulder blades, and Crowley runs a finger along the spot, breath hitching at the way the angel shudders from his touch, a revulsed sensation. 

“I…I don’t like feeling this useless. This helpless.” He goes still momentarily, gathering his thoughts, then looks down at the hands tapping atop his books. “Angels are supposed to be prepared for anything, ready to take care of business and then return to duty as soon as their tasks have been completed. I protected Earth, and I should be back to prime health by now, ready for the next task.”

“So you’re willing to admit that something’s gone wrong, then.”

“Well—”

“I’m looking over your shoulder and my Latin’s not really what it used to be, y’know. I was always a bit of a barbarian as they say—er, _said_ —but I can make out the book on supernatural medicine, celestial healing, and alchemy on the table.”

Aziraphale sighs in defeat, fingers skimming over a few passages in the mentioned book. 

“I also spot that picture of Asag—they got his nose all wrong in that illustration, didn’t they? I’m assuming that’s the original Sumerian text? Poor humans may have written about how scary he looked, but they wouldn’t have known anything about the smell, would they?”

“Looking for passages about if he could cast any spells, or had any venom in his teeth perhaps,” the angel admits softly. “Found nothing.”

“And are those the _Confessions_?” Back to Latin. “Why the heaven are you reading those?”

“I suppose I’m feeling some guilt about all this, dear.”

“Show me your wings and tell me what you mean. C’mon, angel. It’s only me.”

Heaving a sigh, he twitches his shoulders and one wing unfurls before him, the tips of his feathers brushing gently over Crowley, though he’s not sure if it’s a thank-you or an apology. The gesture certainly feels weaker than they did the previous day. “What I’m saying is that I’ve been worried about my status in Heaven for a while now. Since Armageddon, really.”

“So you’ve mentioned,” Crowley murmurs, miracling away a patch of the angel’s shirt (leaving it on though, for the sake of comfort and security) and removing gauze to reveal the boney and bloody wound that doesn’t look the slightest bit better than it had half a day ago. 

“I’ve been concerned that, well, that I might lose my job. Well, my job doesn’t really matter, of course. What I mean is my place. In Heaven.”

Crowley’s hands still over his broken wing. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not healing at all, Crowley. In fact, it seems to be getting worse. Last night, I think it began to become infected as you suggested it might. It was hot and it hurt and then I could smell it, for goodness sakes! I was able to miracle away the bacteria of course. But still! The fact that I was susceptible to it! A Principality with cells on his own flesh _rotting away_. Do you think…do you think there’s a chance that I’ve…I’ve begun to Fall?”

Crowley’s palm comes down, slams on the desk beside the angel so hard that the wood creaks, threatening to shatter. The untouched cup of tea shivers perilously in its saucer. Aziraphale flinches, but doesn’t exactly jump at the show of fury. Even this close to Crowley’s frayed nerves, he seems to understand that the frustration is not directed at him. Instead, he looks over his shoulder a bit curiously, expression going from perplexed to concerned as he meets Crowley’s expression.

The demon knows he must look a fright. “Don’t…don’t you _dare_ suggest that you understand what it is to Fall, angel.”

“But—”

“Do you really think that if you had Fallen that you’d have the wherewithal to open up your little Confessions and pour over your saintly books over a cuppa? You’re missing the part where you plummet, a million-bloody-lightyears per hour into a pool of boiling sulfur and stew there for a short eternity while you lose all memory of who you ever were.”

“Crowley, dear—”

“You’ve forgotten about the part where you wings quite literally burn off your heavenly body, or about the soul-shattering loss that you feel when Her love is plucked from each and every sinew in your heart, the ache of nothingness that carves out your guts and your brain and your light until all that’s left is the suffocating loneliness and loss and guilt.”

“Oh—”

“Tell me, Aziraphale,” his voice cracks, “did I miss the part where you woke up in Hell? I seem to recall you bringing us back to your cozy little bookshop. Your wings still look white to me, not the least bit _charred_ … Did I miss the part where you were damned? Because I think I would have fucking noticed—”

“Oh good lord, would you stop it already?” he yells, grabbing the demon’s arms and squeezing. “I’m sorry! I’ve hurt you. I didn’t mean to! Oh, Crowley…give me a chance to apologize please.”

Crowley stands there a moment, his hands on either side of the angel, pinning him back against the desk as Aziraphale grips his forearms, struggles to look at his eyes through the dark lenses of his sunglasses. There’s a fizzling distrust between them suddenly, Crowley struggling to stifle his agony, Aziraphale’s panic mounting as he beholds the pain pulsing across his features.

“I’ve hurt you. _Insulted_ you. My dear, I am so sorry.”

He’s panting, he realizes. Like a fucking beast. “It’s….’s alright, angel. You didn’t mean it.” He takes a deeper, slower breath, ashamed that his own emotions have bubbled over so readily. It’s been a while since he’s cycled into _those memories_. Aziraphale’s words, giving him the vision of his angel enduring the same Fall that he endured, had triggered a visceral response that he desperately seeks to quell.

“I didn’t mean it of course, but I really insulted you just now, undermined your suffering quite a lot, didn’t I?”

“Well, ngh, ye-you, a bit.”

Guilt floods his system at whatever the hell has just come over him. It’s because he’s on edge from their recent trauma. They’re both on edge, barely holding it together. Something has to give. Aziraphale is, as he always does, overthinking, shock at Crowley’s emotional outburst finally wearing off enough for him to recover his language.

“My dear boy, I didn’t mean to undermine the pain that you’ve endured, the lifetime of suffering you’ve been forced to carry since…since the, er…” he gestures down with his index finger, Hellwards, Crowley supposes. It’s exhausting that the angel can’t just come out and say it, but he’s always been a bit awkward about discussing their respective— _homes_ hardly seems the right word, especially not now—their previous places of employment. “Do accept my sincerest apology, from the bottom of my heart. I should never have been so presumptuous as to draw a comparison between my own befuddlement and your own traumatic experiences—”

“Aziraphale, I think we need help.”

“Help?”

“I can’t…ugh. I’m in over my head tending to the both of us. And your mind is too—” now it’s his turn to gesture wildly, at a loss for words himself. “Too sharp, too expansive, for me to keep up with. D’you suppose there’s anyone who could help us out?”“That’s why I’ve been reading since you went to bed,” he sighs. “And I’ve found nothing of use.”

“Well no, can’t expect Augustine has any secrets you couldn’t have parsed out in a matter of minutes. No, angel, I mean someone else.”

“Whoever could help us?”

“A witch maybe? Agnes Nutter, did she have anything to say about this? Or her descendent, the book girl who was there at Armageddon?”

“Miss Device?” he asks, because of course he remembers her name. “I don’t know about that. She’s powerful, certainly, but she is destined to deal with earthly matters, not celestial ones.”

“You call stopping the Antichrist an earthly matter, then?”

Aziraphale nudges Crowley back by the shoulders, and it’s only then that the demon realizes that since lashing out, he hasn’t made any effort to step back away from the angel; he’s still crowding him against the desk. He doesn’t particularly want to move away, but he’s always obeyed the angel’s comfort zones, so he takes a few steps back, ultimately decides he wants tea too, and heads towards the kitchenette. 

“I don’t know, Crowley,” he murmurs, dragging a hand down his face. “I don’t want to involve humans in this. To potential through anyone into the line of fire with a rogue demon out there. After seeing that poor boy Adam facing down Satan, it seems cruel to go out and ask more humans to take an interest in what we’re dealing with. I just want to feel better already, or to at least know _why_ this is taking so long, be it a curse or a poison or destiny. I’ve never hurt for so long before. Do you think…do you think I should return to Heaven?”

Crowley’s made his way to the small gas stove, and his fingers twitch at those words, a blue flame sparking beneath the kettle, and the vision of a huge column of Hellfire rising before him spikes his heart rate.

“No!”

“Crowley, perhaps Gabriel could—”

Archangel _fucking_ Gabriel, with his icy smile as he ordered Aziraphale to step forward into the flames, to die in front of him, a form of entertainment and self-satisfying revenge more than an act of divine justice.

“No. I’d sooner go up to Heaven myself just to gouge his smug fucking eyeballs out of his smug fucking face before I let you talk to him—”

“What the heaven has come over you—”

He’s never told him the details. About the lack of a trial. About the coldness of it all, about how they leaned closer as his feet touched the flames, wanting to catalogue the agony of his demise by the millisecond. He’s watched vultures follow injured antelope through grasslands with less investment than the way he watched angels lean in to hear that first shriek of agony.

Crowley will never in his limitless life forget the composed smile on the Archangel’s face as he watched his own coworker enter a funeral pyre like he was watching his favorite sporting event on television.

“They tried to kill you, remember?” he hisses. “Same way Hell tried to kill me.”

“Well yes, but we worked around that, didn’t we?” It’s frustrating, how flippant he can be about such weighty matters at times. Particularly when it suits his interests. “Crowley, if I place a call for assistance, if it’s on our terms and he meets us down here, it might be good to get some advice. Heaven fears me now somewhat, thanks to you.”

“You’re stubborn, but I’m more stubborn than you could ever dream of being,” he replies, not taking the bait that the angel offers subtly prodding at his love of being the heroic one, the one who saved the day for Aziraphale. “I personally guarantee you that if you invite him here, you’ll have to watch me maim him, alright?”

The angel steps over to stand beside him by the stove, eyes dark with suspicion. “What’s come over you? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Crowley knows that the angel has lied to him. Hundreds, even thousands of times throughout their long friendship. He knows that he has withheld vital information—the whereabouts of the Antichrist, for example—even when a lot of anguish could have been avoided had he just been honest, trusted Crowley. And despite this, Crowley has never been able to lie to him.

Now, he gathers the loose tea from the little satchel set out beside the kettle, fingers some leaves into the mesh infuser, and meets Aziraphale’s not-a-cloud-in-the-sky-colored eyes. “No,” he says. “I just don’t want to involve Heaven.” He’ll die before he tells him about his time up there.

“Then what do we do about,” he gestures to the gash on his face, expression crumpling. “What can we do? Do you think I’ll get better with time? And more importantly, how will I be able to fend off Ziminiar if he returns?”

“Only one way to find out,” he admits, something tightening in his chest when he realizes that his favorite mug, one that Aziraphale bought for him within the last decade from the National Gallery and decorated with stars and constellations, is not away in a cabinet but sitting out expectantly. Aziraphale has gotten into the habit of leaving his mug out at all times, knowing he’ll be over for tea frequently. He wishes idly that he were the one in pain, just so the angel wouldn’t have to suffer. “Give me time to think of something, alright? In the meantime, I promise, I’ll tend to your wounds. Be the best nursemaid you’ve ever had. Maybe I can help heal you. Ziminiar won’t return this soon. He needs time to plot. And whenever he does come back, we’ll be ready for him.”

There’s the honest moment where that answer does not satisfy, but it’s chased away by the polite smile the angel forces onto his face almost instantly, nodding. He’s always had a knack for hiding his pain. 

“Usually I’m the nursemaid; not used to the one in need of care. I will admit I find it an unbecoming role.”

“Well. If you were a demon, I could probably heal you up with a wave of my hand. Given your ethereal-ness, I’ve probably make it worse trying to re-wing you any further. Using a quick miracle isn’t the route we need to take. The last thing I want to do is hurt you further—”

“Don’t say that,” he insists. “You could never hurt me, Crowley.”

He thinks of the expression that crossed Aziraphale’s face when he first touched the gash on his cheek, thinks of his frantic little breaths as he cleaned Asag’s venom out of his bone marrow. Thinks of how abruptly he slammed his palm down on the desk earlier when they discussed Falling. Lately, it seems like all he’s doing is hurting. “Hnn. Anyway. Think I’ll stick to human-level medicine for now. No more occult tricks, promise.”

He pulls a face. “Indeed, I’ve felt enough of Hell’s heat lately. I’d much appreciate you sticking to gauze and disinfectant.” 

“Your wish is my command, angel.”

This is not a solution. It is settling. And Crowley hates it.

XXX

To make matters worse, the next day, Aziraphale insists on leaving the shop. He claims that he needs time alone, away from humans, to be totally isolated. In his own, pitifully obvious dishonesty, he claims that he wants to _pray_. Crowley calls bullshit.

This promptly leads to a blow-out.

Crowley repeatedly tries to reason with the angel, to make him understand that they need to stay together because Aziraphale is still weak and wounded, and as happy as they are to pretend Ziminiar won’t return, they both know better than to be so naïve. Best to be together so in case the moment comes sooner rather than later, and Crowley can jump into action. Yes, it’s paranoid thinking: that happens to be Crowley’s _modus operandi_. It’s worked quite well for the past couple millennia, and even helped motivate a certain angel into taking action against an imminent apocalypse, thank you very much.

Aziraphale holds fast to his own convictions, insisting that he understands the risk, but needs to get away for a bit, that he wants to attempt to communicate with God to understand the pain he’s enduring and how to overcome it. (In that moment, Crowley sees a flicker of truth: something is wrong with Aziraphale, and he’s desperate enough to go it alone to try to find out what within his celestial mechanism has busted). Anyway, he adds, he’s losing his mind sitting around waiting to heal and not actually healing, and anyway, surely the demon could occupy himself elsewhere for a few hours? 

“I haven’t been sitting around sipping tea and watching you read Augustine for fun, angel! I’ve stayed here to look out for you.” As soon as the admission is out, he regrets it. 

It’s about then that a layer of frost seals itself over the window of their joined home: something cold blurring the once-clear pane that separates them, making it a little harder to see through, a little more opaque. 

It feels like slow motion as his words strike the angel, settle in, and yank the corners of his mouth Hellwards, igniting that nervous shuffle of his hands, the yanking against the worn edge of his waistcoat, frantic fingerdance that he’s leaned on eternally when upset. “Well if I’m so boring and unpleasant to be around, take the opportunity to get outside yourself,” he snaps, though a light seems to go out in that moment, his scarcely-perceivable glow dimming immeasurably yet again. It seems that soon Earth will be as dark as those outermost corners of space had been.

“How many times do I have to state the obvious? We don’t know when Ziminiar is going to return. I want to stay close by in case that happens.”

“I won’t go far, alright? You have my word. You’ll be able to sense me near you,” he’s already plucked his overcoat from the coat rack, and Crowley understands in that moment that he can’t control the angel, can’t imprison him in his own home, even if it’s for his own safety. Aziraphale would never do such a thing to him. The very codependency of their Arrangement has always conceded to the fact: they are independent, and must remain so in order to survive. “Give me just a little while. Four hours.”

“Three.”

“Three? Crowley that’s hardly—”

“Three or else I’m coming with you.”

“I already told you, I wish to be alone when I—”

“Three it is then. Get it? Got it? Bully.”

He fusses with his jacket, then stomps out in agitation, slamming the door behind him. Crowley hasn’t eaten anything that day, but he suddenly feels like vomiting. What if Ziminiar has been waiting, somehow cloaked, ready to strike as soon as they separated? What if that was the last time he’d ever see the angel, and the next thing he feels is that whoosh of darkness as his aura is wiped from the earth? What if their last words were spoken with harsh tones—

The bell above the door jingles as Aziraphale peeks back in, looking a tad guilty. “Can I pick us up something to eat on my way back?” he asks quietly.

An olive branch. Crowley could cry. “Whatever you like, angel. I’ll eat whatever you put in front of me.”

“Jolly good,” he half-smiles, relieved that the demon is willing to accept his peace offering. “A new restaurant opened up just down the road; they make wonderful curries. The sort of thing that soothes you to the bone on a cold blustery day like today; you’ll love it. I’ll bring you something from there.”

“Nothing too spicy,” Crowley warns.

“I know, dear, I _know_. The rogan josh in Persia was my mistake. Perhaps a nice pasandra. Anyway, I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

“ _Three_. Be safe, angel.”

For a few minutes, he knows that the angel is walking away from him because he can still feel his presence as easily as though he could reach out and touch him. Then, suddenly, there’s a disconnect, a momentary, world-stopping panic and Crowley’s skin crawls with anxiety as though his blazer has burst into a thousand crawling spiders. Mentally, he pushes out slightly, combing outwards from London and across Europe—yes. Yes, Aziraphale has miracled himself hundreds of miles away, but he’s still present, on earth. Crowley can still feel him. He had not been lying.

Typically, Crowley appreciates time to himself. Like Aziraphale, he’s grown accustomed to long bouts of isolation, and can handle separation from his sole celestial friend well; it gives him time to think, to ponder, to amuse himself. It’s where he’s come up with some of his better ideas, among them phonebooks, pyramid schemes, and those little plastic tabs on bags of sliced bread. And, like also Aziraphale, he’s often spent decades running with humans in their funny little social circles, asking them questions, seeing what kinds of theories they can come up with themselves. Crowley is a man who knows how to make good use of his limitless life.

He could go check on his plants. He knows that by some sort of demonic miracle or other, their soil has remained moist enough to ensure their survival, and if they know what’s good for them, they’ve taken the time away from their master to grow even more verdant, exquisite even. Doubtful, though; the ungrateful bastards can be bloody mutinous. 

But no, he doesn’t have the energy to leave the bookshop, to part from the angel’s smell, and anyway, in case the angel returns sooner than expected, he’d like to be here for him. Needs to protect his property. The demon takes to pacing, glancing at the spines of the thousands of books he’s passed countless times before, aware of every title, though their arrangement often changes. Aziraphale has the most insufferable tendencies to completely re-organize his entire collection every couple of years or decades, depending on his mood, and Crowley hardly feels that Dostoevsky would appreciate being so close to De Sade. Sure, he gets that they’re on different shelves, and that the current organizing principle in place for this section of the shop is something to the effect of ‘Novels In Descending Order of popularity During the Author’s Lifetime, by Decade’—not one of Aziraphale’s better fancies, to say the least— still, the physical proximity of the two authors, he can’t help but feel, would have left the Russian quite upset. And knowing that, Crowley is all for it. He rubs his thumb over _The Brothers Karamazov_ in a gesture that could be encouraging, could be mocking.

The more time he spends pacing though, the more time he comes to realize something: it might not be a bad idea to leave. He inevitably replays their ambush over and over again in his head. The other three demons had latched on, known instinctively that Crowley was the weak link, the way a lost child instinctively seeks out a motherlike figure for help. It was something inherent that they could feel. And had he not been there, had Marchosias not lunged for him as Asag looked on in glee, Aziraphale might not have been mutilated. He’d killed two demons without breaking a sweat. Maybe if Crowley had never taken the angel out for lunch that afternoon, if he’d stayed home watching _Golden Girls_ or sticking chewed gum on benches in the park near his flat, things might have gone differently. Aziraphale might not have held back, not been so infuriatingly determined to hide his strength and his deadliness from his friend. He might not have encountered their attackers at all; perhaps they would have presented themselves before Crowley instead, and things would have gone differently. Surely they would have had more luck locking onto his location than the angel’s.

No, there is no scenario that Crowley can come up with where he wasn’t somehow the catalyst that brings Ziminiar and his cronies in contact with his angel. 

Ergo: it is unquestionably his fault that Aziraphale is hurt, that he’s spent the better part of a week oozing blood and staring at walls, lost in thought. The next question to ask is: what difference can he make now? He yanks a copy of _Letters from My Windmill_ and carries it a few yards further down the bookshelf, muttering to himself that _Daudet published this in the 60s, not the 70s, angel_. The solutions to make the angel happy rise up in his mind: elaborate meals at preferred restaurants, surprise walks in the park and a string quartet that just happens to start playing some Vivaldi as they stroll past even though they had been tuning half-heartedly moments before, rare books gifted by Crowley from mysterious friends, and _I have no use for it, so let it gather dust here, amongst your musty tomes_.

Those aren’t solutions though, just band-aids. He can’t recall the angel having ever been so afflicted before. Crowley needs to be able to rectify this, to make things right. Little demonic miracle of his own, snap his angel back to himself, remind him that kindness exists in the world, that there is goodness, and that where there is goodness available, Aziraphale deserves every last drop of it. But he comes up with nothing.

Unless _take the opportunity to get out yourself_ had been the angel’s polite way of saying _fuck off_.

Maybe what he really wants, or what he really needs, is time alone. The thought pierces deep, hollows out all of the warm bits in Crowley’s chest and leaves him feeling like an empty husk. Six hundred decades of running into each other, a good two hundred decades of the Arrangement, of friendship, has made them mutually dependent on one another, and without the slightest bit of shame. It’s only natural to look forward to time spent with the only other immortal on earth.

But if Crowley has determined that it’s his fault Aziraphale is hurt, then the angel probably reached this conclusion already, was probably cursing Crowley’s name under his breath the very moment his bones began to crack beneath Asag’s maw. Aziraphale’s always been quicker at sorting things out like that; the fact that he’s managed to act so polite for this long since the battle is a true testament to his Heavenly civility.

It’s likely, Crowley realizes, that his angel has been frustrated with him since the moment Ziminiar escaped from them out in deep space.

Pacing faster now, passing Dostoevsky a dozen times, then three dozen, he begins to panic. Oh, he’s earned Aziraphale’s ire plenty of times. It’s only natural given their opposing natures. He’s received the cold shoulder, or novella-length angry letters detailing precisely how the angel feels about such-and-such, or on one memorable occasion in the tenth century, he’d hastened a small town along in building a church right over what had been a favorite garden of Crowley’s. Aziraphale had later admitted to feeling rather guilty about that one.

Their fights always blow over, but this is different. Crowley has not simply cocked things up: he has done the one thing he’s avoided doing since the Earth was created: he’s let Aziraphale down.

_Your fault_ , he thinks to himself, hands flying up to muss through his own hair. Pacing isn’t enough: he wants to smash his head through some of these bookshelves, to let his wings shake loose and fly through the air until the room looks the way the inside of his skull feels. He wants to do something. His concern for Aziraphale’s health has blinded him from reality, and now, alone, it crashes down around him.

This is worse than the time the angel was discorporated. _Your fault_. Worse than the smell of burning books, than the horror of being on earth without him, looking at the prospect of a lifetime devoid of someone who would consider betraying God’s Great Plan for the opportunity to eat sushi. _Your fault_. The stakes are higher this time: Aziraphale can’t rush over to Heaven’s side at the last minute and hide behind Michael or Gabriel. He’s an enemy to Heaven— _your fault_. He’s an enemy to Hell, even more-so than he already was— _your fault_. What he needs is someone who can protect him, guard him, but the more Crowley ruminates, the more he comes to realize that Aziraphale has grown tired of him, wants to be left alone, deserves some peace and quiet. _Because all of this is your fucking fault!_

“Fuck!” Cursing isn’t enough: he lets out a primal scream, for lack of any other way to express his pain, and nearly leaps out of his snakeskin boots when, right behind him, comes the angel’s voice.

“Crowley? What on Earth is that matter?”

He whirls around to face his friend, who stands with a large paper bag of takeout in one hand, a cardboard carton holding two cups of chai in the other. For each second that the demon gapes at him, shocked by how quickly three hours have passed, the angel’s brows creep higher up his forehead, alarm etching itself further and further into his features.

“My dear boy, what’s happened?”

“Nothing,” he says, feeling like a marionette whose strings have just been cut, slumping to the ground uselessly. 

“You were screaming.”

“Just…bit stressed, I s’pose.”

Thankfully, the angel offers him an out when his cheeks color slightly. “I didn’t mean to run late,” he insists. “The restaurant was more crowded than I expected it to be this time of day. Had to wait quite a while to get this. But I’m back, so you can relax now, can’t you?” He offers the bag of food to Crowley; the demon can smell the spices in the curry, the chiles and the asafetida and the cinnamon. His mouth waters a little bit, in spite of the maelstrom between his brows. “You’ll quite like this, I suspect. Let’s go the kitchen, shall we? The chai here is supposed to be wonderful! I hope it’s not too milky for you…”

Whatever else he’s muttering about is lost as he steps out of earshot, and the demon can only follow along, watch in wonder as the angel faffs about his kitchen, pulling out plates and utensils and pulling out their respective meals. As Aziraphale lauds the talents of the line cooks in the restaurant, Crowley takes in his posture, his eyes.

The pain is still enormously present, there’s no denying it. Whatever the fuck he’d been up to, and it certainly wasn’t praying, it hasn’t done anything to alleviate his agony or hasten along his body’s delayed healing process. The furrow between his brows still runs deep, and he holds himself as though he’s still out in space, perpetually suspended in the moment that teeth first cut into his bones. The general warmth in his aura, the glow that identifies him as a creature of love and light, is still secondary to the overwhelming sense of misery.

“Crowley?”

“Hm?”

“Why dear, have you heard a word I’ve been saying to you?”

“The best curry I ever had, right?” Lost in his own thoughts or not, of course he was half-listening to Aziraphale. “If we’re sticking with north-Indian, which I still maintain is not as good as Japanese-style curry, then I’d say the kind we had that time in Kabul. D’you remember Babur?”

The angel’s face softens with fondness and for just a moment, some of his old light seems to flicker back to life. “Oh, yes. Not a terribly good ruler, was he?”

“Horrendous, actually.”

“But oh, what a gourmand!”

“Yes, obsessed with getting the melons from Samarkand to grow all over bloody Asia. They weren’t that good; can’t see why he was so determined. Too many seeds back in the day, if y’ask me. Dreadful to pick ‘em fro your teeth. D’you remember, we feasted with his party along that river? And when everyone else was sleeping off the big meal, you and I took our wine down along the riverbank and talked until dawn.” 

In honesty, Crowley hadn’t liked the curry all that much. But he remembered it fondly because that night had been brilliant. It was a time of intellectual expansion, and Aziraphale had been electric with happiness, seeing humans exchange and share ideas so happily as he nibbled almond-stuffed apricots. There had been violence and conquest too; those were inevitable. But wine and creative ingenuity had flowed so readily in Kabul back then, and how happy his angel had been for it.

“I remember that time well,” he admits, passing one of the takeout containers over to the demon. “You spoke of crafting the stars that night as we sat below them.”

Crowley feels a faint blush rise to his cheeks at this memory. Since his Fall, he’s never had anyone else to speak to about who he used to be. How freeing it had been, to talk of his ability to create with the angel. To open up about just what he used to be; he’d been so capable, so eager to deliver the truth of his own making. As Aziraphale was designed with a sword fit into his hand and the command _protect God’s own_ in his ears, so Crowley had been born with visions of galaxies dancing before his eyes, with the spark of creativity causing his fingertips to itch.

“Sometimes,” he says slowly, haltingly. “Sometimes I think it would be better if I went back there for a bit.”

“To Samarkand? I thought you just said you didn’t like the melons?”

“No, no, the stars, I mean, you idiot. Nothing holding me back anymore; don’t have to send any dull paperwork Downstairs to report on my mischief. What’s stopping me from popping off? A holiday out beyond this solar system. Check in on things.” He’d thought of it once or twice, foolishly: the prospect of taking Aziraphale out to witness his hand-crafted constellations first-hand. The thought of going out there alone only makes him feel hollow.

“I suppose you could,” he replies. “But…”

“But what, angel? No more sides, remember? No one cares where I go.”

Aziraphale takes a tentative sip of chai, sets the paper cup down on the counter, reaches for a napkin to dab his lips. “Well, I care. I would miss you, dear boy.”

The hope that blooms in his chest burns all the more because he knows it’s a false hope. He’s being polite, but sometimes being polite means lying. And he knows well enough that Aziraphale lies all the time. “Nice of you to say,” he mumbles, stabbing a fork into his curry, though he’s lost his appetite.

The angel lets the conversation drop, expression cloudy. They eat in silence. Well, Crowley eats a bit. Aziraphale stirs his meal and never actually gets around to taking a bite.

Crowley knows it that blustery afternoon: he needs to leave.

Only he can’t find a way to say it. The next day, Aziraphale leaves again for several hours. Same as before, he closes the door, and with a whoosh, Crowley loses his presence for a heart-dropping moment. All it takes is a soft push, and then he feels the angel, still nearby. Same hemisphere, same continent. Just far away from him. 

The demon paces the bookshop, yells at the books as though they were his plants. In the same way that Aziraphale once sized him up, un-amused and utterly undaunted when Crowley pinned him to a wall in an act of intimidation, the books hold their own, bored by his presence.

When the angel returns, they make small talk, or Crowley stalks off to nap, or Aziraphale pretends to have work to do, insisting that in the next day or two, he’ll re-open his shop. They don’t want to talk to each other. Well, Crowley wants to talk, but he is a coward. He doesn’t want to say he’s going to leave, because that will make it real. He’ll have to act on his word. And he’ll have to watch Aziraphale lie to his face, put on a polite show of being sad to see him go, while really he’ll probably be thrilled to have his independence back.

What he needs is the strength to sever the only bond he’s ever cared to maintain since the advent of communication. His entire long life, Aziraphale is the one constant he’s ever cared for. Taking a step away from him is going to be brutal. _An amputation of sorts_ , he thinks dryly, then instantly regrets it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A surprise visit from a certain Archangel and a quick pit stop to Tadfield push Crowley and Aziraphale tantalizingly close to hope, but the more desperate they get, the more Aziraphale insists on hiding his feelings. Crowley is starting to have a hard time processing his own anxiety.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoooo this chapter is a bit of a doozy. Hopefully all of the content and dialogue make up for the rather dull previous chapter! Things would go so much smoother for both of these idiots if they could just be honest with one another......but they're going to argue more instead! :D I apologize for the lack of editing here; let me know if you find any repetitions/mistakes, as I plan on going back and editing more at a later time.
> 
> As ever, you're welcome to swing by [Tumblr](https://supposed2bfunny.tumblr.com) to say hi! Thanks so much for reading!

On the third day of the angel’s bizarre expedition, he’s worked up the nerve. Not because he wants to talk about it; because living with the grief of his future is too much. Better to stop stewing in the limbo of what their lives together could have been, better to end things quick and move on, to embrace his new eternity of solitude. The copious amounts of scotch that he drinks in the angel’s absence help loosen his lips some too. And the snow, which had started as a freezing-cold rain and then hardened into something more insidious, and had begun accumulating on the ground and blanketing London in whitegraywhite chill. It’s far too early in the season for this kind of whether, as everyone on the radio blares indignantly. Well, early winter it is then. Fall had always felt like an intermission anyway. 

Mid-afternoon as Aziraphale hangs his coat up on the rack by the front door, brushing wet snow from it, Crowley approaches, clears his throat.

“So I’ve been thinking while you were out.”

“Yes?” the angel asks, unwinding a scarf from around his throat.

“You seem to be faring well enough,” if he expects Aziraphale to dissimulate and smile like all his fine and dandy, he’s disappointed by the blank face he gets. “You’re obviously busy, doing whatever it is you’re doing.” He tries to keep the resentment from his tone that Aziraphale has still not opened up about whatever it is he’s been up to. “May-be,” he draws the syllables out like each one is heavy on the tongue. He’s stalling. “Maybe it would be best if I were to pop off.”

Aziraphale nods. “I’ve been telling you for days now that you ought to check on your plants, my dear boy. It would do you some good to tend to them.”

“I mean, hng,” the sentence swerves off like it's skidding over ice. He forces his voice back. “Mean I should leave for longer than to just check on the plants.”

Now the angel’s eyes slot against his and remain there, pinning him. He feels like a butterfly or moth mounted in one of those display cases in an entomology exhibit. 

“Maybe it would be better for both of us if I were to…give you some space.”

“You want to leave,” he says, tone flat, a stone dropped into a well.

“Think it might be best, really. Don’t you?”

“For how long?”

“Dunno…we used to go centuries without running into one another, Aziraphale, I’m sure we’ll both manage.”

“ _Centuries_? That scoundrel Ziminiar could return any day now to try and raze the earth and you’ve decided you might want to ‘pop off’ for a few centuries?”

“We don’t know that he’ll be back anytime soon, angel. In fact, I really doubt he will. He’s a demon. Our kind like to play mind games. He might choose to lay low for another millennia, try to coax us into dropping our guards. It’d be downright moronic for him to show up within a bloody month of getting knocked around by you anyway.”

“That’s not the attitude you had recently.”

“Look,” he snaps. “If he comes back, I’ll sense him. In fact, I’ll sense him before you do. And if he’s stupid enough to come back, I’ll find him and kill him. I won’t let him hurt you.”

He gestures at the space between them, frustrated by the way Aziraphale’s body language looks like a landslide, crumpling in on itself faster than he can control it. He would have though this was what the angel wanted. Now he’s not so sure he read the situation right at all.

“You would leave me,” he speaks quietly, like his voice has to work hard to get a few feet across the room, “when I’m injured?” and as soon as the words are out, he seems to draw a conclusion from them, eyes widening and cheeks coloring in shame. “Oh, Crowley. You’re frustrated with my injury, aren’t you? Oh good lord,” he staggers back, almost to the door, hand flying over his mouth. “You want to get away from me.”

“No, no, no, _nonono_ ,” Crowley snarls, lurching forward and slicing the negative space between them with the sharpness of his body. “You’re misunderstanding. The opposite, angel. Maybe my presence is what’s holding you back from recovery. Demonic auras an’ all that. Maybe you’ll feel better once you’re rid of me.”

“How the hell can you say that?” he swears, taking Crowley by surprise. “After all we’ve been through—”

“After all we’ve been through and we’ve never seen anything like this. Things have been stagnant for _days_ now, angel. The only thing we haven’t tried yet is to sort this out individually.”

“That’s because we’re on our own side,” he cries, and the words pierce Crowley’s chest; he nearly doubles over at the pain Aziraphale is inflicting on him without even meaning to. Throwing his own desperation back at him; the cruelty is unbearable. “When the world was ending, we only stood a chance when we were finally able to unite and work together as a joint force.”

“This isn’t Armageddon, you idiot! This is a demonic force hurting you, threatening you. I’ve sat around babysitting your shop for days now and you haven’t healed a single cell. Maybe I’m the problem.”

“You have _never_ been the problem, Crowley,” Aziraphale snaps through grit teeth, reaching up to rub his temples. “The only problem here is your histrionic need to be the tragic hero!”

“At least I’m willing to step up to be the hero, unlike you!” the words are out of his mouth before he can help himself. “How many centuries now have you bumbled about into stupid trouble, only for me to whisk you out of harm’s way at the last possible moment?”

Aziraphale blusters, pain replaced by something more indignant around his eyes and mouth. “Excuse me? I never asked you to show up! In Pompeii, in the Bastille, in that bloody church with the Nazis—I never asked for—”

“You never needed to!” his voice hits something embarrassingly close to a screech. “Because I came before you could even think to call for me. I could sense you were in danger and I saved you! Came to you! Said ‘bugger all’ to the higher ups that would have flayed me if they knew I was wasting demonic miracles to rescue God’s most naïve creation.”

“Crowley. If you have a point, I think you’d best get to it.”

“All those times, angel. All those damn times I came to you. Now I’m trying to step out. For your sake, for my sake. For both our sakes. And _now_ you have the audacity to question my judgement? My motivation’s same as it’s always been here.”

No. This is wrong. None of this is how he meant for it to go down. It’s a resentment speaking, one he thought he’d long since buried. 

“But,” his expression cracks, pain seeping through, and suddenly it’s washing over Crowley like the icy sleet lashing the windowpane. “I don’t want you to leave!”

“You do,” he insists. He’s spent enough hours alone, agonizing over the simple truth. “Why else would you leave me here? Why else would you shut down? You think I’m blind? I can see how much you’re suffering every second of every day. And you won’t let me help you. You’ve been too polite to tell me to bugger off and that’s very angelic of you, but I think it’s time I listen to your silence.”

“I’m not asking you to leave me, nor have I ever” he insists, his something-colored eyes glimmering. “But you’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?”

“If there’s a chance you’ll recover without a demonic presence looming over you, I have to take it.”

In the silent moment between them, he hopes, with every ounce of optimism remaining in his body, Crowley hopes that Aziraphale will look at him with that tenderness that always unnerves him, reach out and touch his shoulder or his face, and say something that will crumple his defenses, something like “Please, stay. For me.” Or “I can no longer imagine life without you, Crowley.”

Instead, he schools his face into neutral, shrugs a stiff shoulder. “Then who am I to stop you?” he asks.

Crowley has never been more thankful for his sunglasses, for the way they block the sight of his eyes closing in a brief wince as his heart shatters in his chest. This is it, then. Goodbye. They survived the apocalypse, only to break apart a few months later. It all feels so revoltingly anticlimactic.

Nodding, Crowley starts stepping back. He’s going to need to get out the front door, and he’s currently got Aziraphale effectively pinned there. As they begin to shuffle around each other awkwardly, the angel’s eyes suddenly widen and his entire body stiffens; Crowley thinks of a bird’s plumage rising when it detects a threat.

“Angel?” he knows better than to think this alarm is directed at him.

“Heavenly presence,” he breathes. “Here.”

Crowley’s blood runs cold. They’ve come for Aziraphale. “Where? How many?”

“My back office,” he replies, starting to push past Crowley to confront the new intruder. “Just one. It’s…Gabriel.”

The name triggers something bloodred-violent in Crowley. Something that holds all the anger of _shut your stupid mouth and die_. That smile. That sadism.

“Stay here,” he murmurs, and then his wings have spread out and he’s throwing open the door of the study with no memory of crossing the room. On Aziraphale’s desk, there is an old fashioned letter opener, and the demon summons it forth, feels the cool metal slap into his palm as he takes in the sight of Archangel Gabriel, looking smug as always, with his stupid sweater and his stupid scarf and his cruel violet eyes, daring to run his fingers of the page of the _Confessions_ that Aziraphale left opened on his desk. Lines Crowley has glanced at himself a dozen times over the course of the morning as snow fell:

_Lord, you turned my attention back to myself. You took me up from behind my own back where I had placed myself because I did not wish to observe myself, and you set me before my face so that I should see how vile I was, how twisted and filthy, covered in sores and ulcers. And I looked and was appalled, but there was no way of escaping from myself. If I tried to avert my gaze from myself, his story continued relentlessly, and you once again placed me in front of myself; you thrust me before my own eyes so that I should discover my iniquity and hate it. I had known it, but deceived myself, refused to admit it, and pushed it out of my mind_.

Crowley launches himself over the desk so he’s half-knelt upon it, pressing the dull blade of the letter opener to Gabriel’s jugular and snarling, the taste of smoke bitter on his tongue.

_“Get the fuck out of here before I send you back in pieces.”_

“Crawly,” Gabriel smiles icily. “Not who I came to see.”

“It’s _Crow_ ley,” Aziraphale speaks up, the last to enter the room, though Crowley can feel that his eyes are on him rather than the intruder whose throat he would like so very much to split open. “Dear, do step back so Gabriel can speak.”

“I can speak just fine like this,” Gabriel assures, dark eyes glinting dangerously, not breaking Crowley’s hold, smirk never leaving his lips. “But thank you for your concern, Aziraphale. You’ve always been so very hospitable. Even to demons, apparently.” He snaps his fingers, and the chair, neatly tucked into the desk, suddenly flies upwards, slamming into Crowley, its armrests coming to life and wrapping themselves around his wrists, drawing them back down, forcing him to sit in a way that calls to mind his time in Heaven in Aziraphale’s body, right before they’d asked him to step into a column of hellfire. He resists, right wrist refusing to bend, determined to keep his makeshift weapon pressed to the Archangel’s jugular even as he is attacked. The cold smile chills further, but there is real pleasure on Gabriel’s face as he moves like light, taking the tip of the letter opener and twisting, ligaments and tendons and finally bone snapping within the demon’s wrist.

Crowley has enough time to hiss out a gasp of pain, and suddenly the chair is returning to the floor, pulling Crowley along with it. With a loud slam, he’s bound and writhing against the unmoving restraints of a bloody cherrywood desk chair, grunting in fury.

Aziraphale _tsks_ behind him, and the desk vanishes completely; Crowley, seated and strapped against his will in the chair, goes flying backwards across the room. His angel breezes past him, the chair releasing Crowley as he walks by. His hand waves vaguely, and Crowley’s wrist snaps back into place with the crackle of bone and the spring of tendons sliding into place. It smarts for only an instant, and then feels like nothing was ever out of place. All this he does without glancing at Crowley, neutral expression never leaving Gabriel’s eyes, as though he’s completely unafraid.

He is not the least bit unafraid.

“Ignore him. You’ve come to Soho to speak to me, so how can I help you?” he asks, “I thought we had arranged for you to never intrude upon me again. I breathed fire in your face.”

“Indeed, that was a little ugly of you really,” Gabriel agrees. “I’m here to discuss some events that have occurred recently here on Earth; I’ve received word of an unauthorized invasion from Hell and since you’re the only Heavenly point of contact currently on this twice-damned planet—” he freezes then, looking at Aziraphale, really looking. However sterile Gabriel presents himself, he is still made of the same basic components as Aziraphale, components that include things like love and empathy. However much he may hate his former coworker, he’s unable to block out the empathic bond between them. Surprise, then concern, then aggravation cross his face in rapid succession. “Before I go any further, what’s happened to you? You’re seriously injured.” His violet eyes snap to Crowley. “Was it—”

“Oh, for goodness sake, of course not,” Aziraphale snaps. “Crowley saved my life. And yes, I know about the unauthorized invasion. It was three renegade demons, led by Ziminiar, one of those seventy or so rebels once constrained by the heroism of King Solomon. The threat to the Almighty’s creations on this planet have been neutralized at this time.”

“Well. That’s excellent news! What did they want here?”

“As one would imagine, many demons were disappointed by the lack of bloodshed after…erm,” his usual nervousness comes forth as he struggles to find a way to reference the apocalypse that he had a hand in diverting. “Uh, well, after Armageddon didn’t quite… _get on_ …as some iterations of the Great Plan had suggested it might.”

“After you and the snake behind you fucked it all up, you mean.”

“Well, I hardly see how vulgarity is called for, Gabriel. But yes. Ziminiar was out for conquest, blood. He underestimated what Crowley and I would do to protect our home.”

“The threat is well and truly neutralized, then?”

“Aziraphale killed two demons in the time it took you to wind that ugly scarf around your neck,” Crowley says, rising and striding to stand beside Aziraphale. “Considering you tried to end his life, Heaven might look pretty stupid right about now if it weren’t for him. Three demons running amok burning Earth to bits, looking for a fight. And you lot not following up till a few days later? That’s just sloppy is what it is. He averted a crisis for you.”

“You took someone’s life? The angel with zero confirmed kills after the first war?”

That pained looked Aziraphale has worn constantly since that fateful encounter becomes more pronounced. “I didn’t want to…it just seemed like the only way.”

“Hold on now,” Gabriel says, straightening his scarf unconsciously now that Crowley has brought it up. “You said there were three demons. Two confirmed kills. The third invader?”

“Ziminiar fled. Presumably back to Hell, so I’d recommend you reach out to Lord Beelzebub to see if they’ve heard of him recently,” Crowley says. “After all, you two seem chummy.”

This earns him glare, but Gabriel seems to be considering his options. He’s smart enough to know that Aziraphale is a chronic liar, but his wounds do an excellent job of validating their claims.

“You have no further leads for me? No idea whether he said he’d be back, or if there was anything here that he wanted?”

“Nope,” Crowley pops the ‘p’ like one might pop their bubblegum. “All told, it was over rather quickly. _Veni, vidi, bloodshed_. Aziraphale here took them into the far recesses of space and smited them. Smote them. Smit?”

“Shut up,” Aziraphale mutters beside him, no real bite to his words.

“I’d suggest Gamma Draconis if you want to see if Asag and Marchosias’s bodies are still there.”

The Archangel’s expression suggests that that’s not a bad idea, but he will certainly not be the one to head into the cold of space just to investigate the corpses of some lesser demons. “Well, I must confess: I’m impressed. Aziraphale, I owe you a great deal of gratitude for performing your Heavenly duties.”

He nods in reply. “As I said, I was acting to protect my home. Our home.” His eyes flicker to Crowley, then he winces like he wishes he hadn’t said that.

“I’d best be on my way then, to see if Hell authorized their invasion. Do something about that wound, won’t you? It’s unpleasant to be around an angel who can’t take care of himself.”

“Actually, Gabriel,” Aziraphale steps forward then, arm extended out, stalling the Archangel. “Do you think, um, perhaps…you could take a look at it? I’m not…healing quite as quickly as I had hoped I would.”

Gabriel looks perplexed. “You can’t just miracle the wounds away?”

“No.”

He purses his lips together, then steps forward. If he held his hand out, he could touch Aziraphale. Crowley’s muscles coil, ready to strike should he need to. “Very well, let’s get this over with quickly. What seems to be the problem, exactly?”

“Well, ah, perhaps it would be easier for me to just show you. Would you mind?” Without waiting for a reply, he wriggles his shoulders and his healthy wing unfolds quickly before tucking close against his back.

It’s almost worth this display of vulnerability to see Gabriel’s look of horror as he realizes what’s wrong. “The bastards cut your wing off.”

“Bit it off, actually.”

“Good lord.”

“Ah, quite.” Aziraphale glances at Crowley, steels himself, and spins on his heel, letting his former boss step forward to look through the fabric of his shirt to see the gauze Crowley has set there. “It’s been almost a solid week. The pain is as excruciating as the moment it happened…sometimes a bit worse, as it’s become infected a few times. Neither Crowley nor I have been able to miracle the wound shut, nor have I felt any evidence that my wing is going to repair itself—oh!” 

Gabriel snaps his fingers and the gauze is gone, revealing the bloody wound. He snaps again, presumably an attempt to miracle the wound shut, and nothing happens. A second snap. He doesn’t bother to see if the adage about the third time holds any merit. His brows ride up towards his hairline, his mouth curving in revulsion. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says. A quick clap, and he’s wearing a pair of surgical gloves, reaching down to prod the stump of bone jutting out of the angel’s back.

Aziraphale yelps, face blurring as Crowley saw it do the moment he was bitten: pain extending beyond his human body’s capacity to express it.

“Honestly, show some decorum, Aziraphale,” Gabriel chastises.

“Right, terribly sorry,” he hisses, eyes glazing wetly as he forces himself to settle, holding the panic of a deer in headlights: helpless, afraid, unmoving.

“Easy!” Crowley snarls as Gabriel starts to poke at the wound, fascinated, like he can sense something hidden there, below the surface.

“Shut up, snake. You let this happen.”

“H-he really didn’t,” Aziraphale starts, sucks in a breath rather than continuing as the bone of his wing is inspected further by unsympathetic fingers. Crowley can feel the urgency pouring off the angel, the frantic need for the pain to cease. But Gabriel takes his time in spite of his look of disgust. Aziraphale licks his lips for want of anything else to do, and his lower lip glistens with saliva. He’s normally so prim, so clean, eating slowly to avoid spills and crumbs, smoothing unseen wrinkles out of his clothes, ever fiddling with the cuffs of his shirtsleeves to attain a look that is unwaveringly put-together. Ordinarily, the sight of his wet lip might be enough to captivate Crowley, to keep him lying awake in bed for weeks. Now he can only keen softly in sympathy: this is not his angel.

“How did you not discorporate?” Gabriel breaks the screaming silence.

“The wound was hardly to my human form; it was to my angelic one. I was, well, I was wearing something between my corporation and my heavenly essence at the time. I suppose that’s how I was able to stay grounded in spite of the blood loss.”

“Hm. Neither angel nor human, are you?”

“Gabriel,” his voice cracks. “That is something I’ve been hoping I could ask you. I am…still an angel, am I not?”

“You don’t really look like one right now,” he answers, eyes narrowing in focus, seeing something in the wound that fascinates him.

“But, yes well, what I’m asking is…I’ve still been able to perform miracles. And my wings…they’re still white. In spite of my rather unofficial dismissal from Heaven, I’m—”

“Are you asking me if you’re fallen?” he interrupts. “Aziraphale, don’t be an idiot. You’d know if you were, trust me. Being as you worked under my department, I would have been called in to authorize a dismissal like that.”

“Oh…you would?”

Gabriel shrugs. “Things are a little more formal these days than they were back before the first war, when God was just smiting angels from the sky left and right.”

“Welly-well, good to know they’ve humanized the process since I was slapped into the sulfur pit,” Crowley mutters. “Good on the Almighty.”

“The point is, I would have seen paperwork. You’re technically still listed as being assigned to my department, for better or for worse. If your… _status_ was changed that drastically, I would know.”

“Oh, that’s very good to hear,” Aziraphale sighs. “I’m so glad I’m not…erm…”

“You’re not Fallen. You’re an angel-human hybrid, is what you are. A mutt.”

“But then…why am I not getting…better? Gabriel, why— _oh!_ ”

Gabriel uses his index and middle finger to part the bone he’s been poking at, and it splits open under his touch, several centimeters down, with a low crack. For the first time, Aziraphale tries to pull away, but is rendered immobile with a tilt of Gabriel’s head and a cruel dose of Heavenly power. The sound Aziraphale makes then makes Crowley want to vomit, but instead, he opts for swinging a fist at Gabriel, who has plunged into the crater of bone to dig something out—

“Here,” he says calmly, holding a tooth under Crowley’s nose as he dodges the swing gracefully. Crowley’s eyes cross as he attempts to look at the thing held so close to his face. He steps back and realizes with revulsion that its Asag’s tooth. It’s been buried in Aziraphale’s busted wing for days, no doubt festering and poisoning him from the inside. “How’d you miss that? Are you stupid, or just crueler than you like to let on?”

“How…” Crowley steps back, holds out his hand when he realizes that Gabriel has no interest in keeping it. “I cleaned his wound so thoroughly after we fought! How did you…?”

“Definitely doesn’t look like one of yours,” Gabriel says thoughtfully, watching Crowley’s reaction. “Though it may as well be, hm? I guess I just have a better eye for these sorts of things than you. Maybe because yours are all…snakey.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale all but sobs, and they both turn to the angel Gabriel has frozen. The Archangel gestures towards him, and he regains control of his nervous system, falling to his knees and buckling forward, full-body shivers running through him.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley drops down beside him, clutching his arms, trying to bring him back into focus. “Breathe, angel. It’s alright, I’m here. I’m here, and I’m not going to let this sadistic prick near you again.” He throws a glare in Gabriel’s direction that clearly indicates he’ll lose a limb if he steps closer.

“I never was a very good medic,” Gabriel concedes, rubbing his hands; the latex gloves dematerialize. Their tips are pink with blood, and then, they are gone. He looks almost cheerful now that his task is done. “Humans drink alcohol, brandy, I’ve heard, for pain sometimes, don’t they? Why don’t you try that since you want to live like one so bad.”

“If you’re just going to kick him while he’s down, then get the Heaven out of here!” Crowley hisses. 

“I will, thank you, demon. Aziraphale, good work protecting the earth. Don’t worry so much about being Fallen,” Gabriel says, watching the spreading stain on the back of the angel’s shirt, the way Aziraphale doesn’t dare turn to face him, lest his expression belie how shattered he is. Observing, yet emoting nothing at the display. “Whatever you are, I fear it may be even worse.”

“I daresay you’re right,” he agrees hoarsely.

With a soft pop, Gabriel is gone. Without his superior there to see, Aziraphale presses his face into Crowley’s neck and shudders, a few tears slipping out of his eyes, dampening the demon’s blazer. Asag’s tooth burns like a brand in Crowley’s palm as he holds the angel close, watches in wretched fascination as he forces his pain down, quells his own tears, and ultimately pulls away, murmuring that he needs to go change his shirt, and he’ll be right back in a jiffy.

When he returns downstairs a minute later, he’s prepared to act as though Gabriel had never appeared at all. In that time, a certainty has cemented itself in Crowley: his spine feels fortified and rigid with the resolve, his blood pulses through him with electric energy. He isn’t giving up. Not yet.

“We need some help,” he says, sliding the tooth into the pocket of his blazer, where it presses like a pebble in his shoe, a vague yet relentless sort of discomfort. 

XXX

“Anyway, I don’t see how you think you’ll be able to find him,” Aziraphale grouses, one hand gripping a white box from a local bakery, the other clutching at the dashboard of the Bentley for dear life as Crowley tears though the slushy streets, not bothering to read the roadmaps. He’s been complaining for well over an hour now, and it’s starting to wear on Crowley’s nerves.

The demon had driven here through literal flames: he could drive to Tadfield this time around with his eyes closed if he had to, so he wasn’t about to let up on his speed at all.

“He’s a kid, angel. Like I said, by this time in the afternoon, school will be over. So he’ll be playing around with his friends.”

“It’s no longer summer, my dear—oh, watch that patch of ice!—he’ll likely be inside, especially given all this snow. Looks like they got even more than we did in London. Besides, I hardly want to introduce myself to his parents. ‘Oh, hello, Mr. and Mrs. Young. Yes, I’m the gentleman who almost shot and killed your son with a crazed old man’s bazooka canon. You might not recognize me as I was an elderly woman at the time. No hard feelings of course, we were trying to avoid the apocalypse back then. Might I come in for a spot of tea to chat with young Adam?’”

“He won’t be with his parents,” he sneers dismissively, hitting the patch of ice dead-on, though the Bentley’s faithful tires do not dare skid over it. “To find a kid, you’ve got to think like one. No self-respecting punk would be inside doing maths after school’s let out. Sure, ‘s a little cold, but a kid can still find ways to have fun.”

“Fun? With all this snow and ice on the ground? He’s human, Crowley.”

“He’s _eleven_ , Aziraphale. You’ve read enough books; do you really know so little about kids?”

Aziraphale huffs and crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s not like I’ve ever had much of a reason to interact with children, save for our rather unsuccessful stint with young Warlock. My assignments from Heaven always dealt with adults: putting good ideas into their heads that would benefit the church, or spread peace or faith, or—”

“Well you don’t answer to Heaven anymore,” Crowley interrupts him. He’s forgotten how annoying it is to listen to Aziraphale chattering on about the virtuous work he’s done for Heaven over the millennia, especially with the image of Gabriel’s cold expression still so clear in his head. One day has not been enough to soften his fury at the intrusion and his treatment of Aziraphale. One millennium will doubtful be enough either. “So instead, listen to me: look for signs of battle.”

“Battle?!”

“Snowball fights, idiot. That’s a sure sign that Adam’s near! What kid could resist snowball fights after the first snow of the year?”

“Surely any child with common sense who doesn’t like ending up soaking wet and cold and—”

“There!” He swings the Bentley onto the shoulder so quickly that the angel yelps, bracing for collision. Of course, the loyal car stops on a dime, and Crowley launches out, slamming the door shut and bounding through several inches of icy dead leaves to step into a small field along the side of the road. In the dead center of the field is a snowman. Not quite like any the demon has ever seen before. This snowman sports a sombrero and a broken pair of glasses—small enough that they probably belonged to a child at some point. A stick comes out of its abdomen to form one arm, the other arm is a flag with a sign that reads “Coexist.” It also has about a half-dozen utensils shoved in it: forks and spoons that were no doubt stolen from someone’s kitchen. Its nose is a kazoo.

The bizarre snowman looks out over the field where a snowball fight has clearly been waged recently. There are small footprints all over the place, including several smears in the ground to indicate where someone has skidded or slipped and slid. On either side of the field are large mounds of snow that must have served as walls or shields. A sole green mitten lies forgotten, casualty of battle. A great deal of fun has been had recently, no doubt enhanced by one powerful young boy’s ability to ensure the weather also plays to his advantage.

“Oh, how dreadful,” Aziraphale comments, coming up behind him finally, carefully picking his way across the field, clearly unhappy with the state of his shoes and the bottoms of his trousers. “What a mess. Adam has been here, hasn’t he?”

“Can you sense it?”

“Not exactly. I’ve felt nothing but love since we drove into Tadfield; it’s difficult to discern where it’s the most concentrated. But this looks like the sort of havoc that he and his little friends would revel in. So if they’ve been here, where have they gone?”

“Into the woods, no doubt,” he replies, pointing to a corner of the field where the various pairs of boots have clearly converged. There are enough tread marks to indicate that the children had both emerged from the woods to launch their battle, and then retreated again. There’s even paw prints to suggest the presence of a small dog amongst them.

The hellhound, Crowley realizes, pushing his sunglasses up farther on his nose.

“Well then,” the angel murmurs. “Fancy a stroll through the woods then?”

“Let me lead the way, angel. In the chance that they see us coming and decide to launch an attack, I’d rather take the brunt of it.”

“What a gentleman you are, protecting me from snowballs,” he responds dryly, but Crowley dares a glance that he knows his sunglasses conceal, and finds the angel smiling softly to himself. Little gestures can mean so much, no matter how strained their emotions are.

The walk through the woods is serene. As they delve deeper into Tadfield, Adam’s love washes over them. The ground feels somehow sacred. A boy, the Antichrist, has walked here. His fondness for these trees, the local stores, for the school district (well, maybe not the school district), for the way the clouds roll over the vast blue sky, have saved this entire planet.

Inevitably, Crowley thinks about how this place has brought him and Aziraphale closer than ever. They’ve spent the past few millennia growing more dependent on one another at an exponential level, sure. Seeing each other first every few hundred years, then every decade or so. Eventually seeking one another out, forming the Arrangement, electing to blow off work in order to spend more time together. Thinking the world was going to end was a real game changer though. There were the six glorious years he spent raising Warlock, the angel’s presence pushed right up against him, softening his harsh edges.

When it all came down to it, here in this very hamlet, just a few miles away at the airbase, Aziraphale had raised a flaming sword, prepared to fight Satan himself to protect Earth, to protect Adam and, most remarkably, to protect Crowley.

He listens to the careful plod of the angel’s steps behind him, marvels at how impossible it is that the angel is still tolerating him, still not sick of him. What has he done to deserve Aziraphale? And what does he have to do to set this right, to save him, to alleviate this pain for him once and for all? He’d do anything, lay down his own life in an instant, if it could wipe the angst from Aziraphale’s face.

“—ley, did you hear me?”

“Hnn?”

“I said, stop walking. The footprints: they vanish! How is that possible?”

Crowley looks down and realizes that he’s become so lost in thought that he nearly missed it: indeed, the footprints simply stop in the middle of the trail. Ahead, the path continues on for a few more meters before curving around through a patch of sycamores. 

“What in the world are these kids on?” he mutters, stepping forward towards the unmarked snow, utterly dumbfounded. “Where did they go?”

“Look!” Again, it’s Aziraphale who spots something, pointing to a depression in the snow where something large has slid downhill a bit, curving off the trail down a narrow embankment. “A sled, perhaps? Do you think they left it here, and then clambered on and slid down there?”

“Clever, angel, very clever. So we’ve gotta get down there if we’re going to find them?”

“Oh, but that incline looks dreadfully steep. And I’ve already done so much harm to my poor brogues…you know, these shoes have held up for over sixty-five years.”

“Well, what choice do we have but to—ack!”

He yelps when something strikes him from behind right between the shoulder blades.

“ _Fire!_ ”

“Oh good lord,” Aziraphale sighs, stepping closer, and just like that, they’re under fire from all sides.

The snowballs are soft at least. But they’re being thrown with speed and strength that show their attackers mean business. Instinctively, Crowley steps closer to Aziraphale so they’re back to back; he knows they’re just snowballs, but he’ll be damned if anyone aggravates the angel’s injury. He’s got morals when it comes to killing kids. Scaring the shit out of them for hurting his angel? That’s a different story.

“Stay close to me,” he mutters towards his companion. “You okay?”

“This is absolutely barbaric!” Aziraphale complains, but he doesn’t sound truly upset, so Crowley doesn’t use any demonic miracles to freeze the snowballs in the air around them. He’ll hold off on that. His biggest concern is Aziraphale, and Aziraphale’s biggest concern seems to be protecting the box in his arms from being knocked to the ground.

“Wait!” calls a voice, different from the one that ordered ‘fire.’ “I know them!”

Just like that, the assault stops, and Crowley begins circling the angel, trying to look through trees and bushes to figure out where the voices are coming from. It’d be easier if it were nighttime; the late-afternoon sunlight reflecting off of the snow makes it hard for him to make the landscape out without squinting. Even with his sunglasses on, his reptilian eyes ache with the brightness.

Suddenly, Adam steps out from where he’s been hiding behind a bush.

Aziraphale lets out a soft breath he’d been holding and Crowley tilts his head, drinking in the sight. Seeing Adam again, and under different circumstances, brings a headrush. The smash of concrete against his face as Crowley’d been dragged to the ground by the force of Satan coming forth, the red tint in the sky as the Four Horsemen had stood there, and in the midst of it all: a boy with windswept hair and seaglass eyes, holding the fate of the universe in his hands.

Adam looks as benevolent now as he had then. A knit cap contains most of his curls, and a parka has replaced the light jacket he’d worn in the late summer. It’s strange to see him in long pants, though back then, it had been strange to see the Antichrist sporting shorts. His winter boots look well-worn, like perhaps they’re hand-me-downs from cousins or friends or even a local second-hand shop. For just a moment, he hesitates, standing there, one black glove on, one off, presumably to help him shape the best snowballs. Eventually he makes up his mind and heads toward them, walking through mounds of snow almost regally.

“You two were there at the airbase. The day my dad grounded me.”

“The day you saved the earth,” Aziraphale agrees. “I was afraid you would have forgotten about us. It’s wonderful to see you again, Adam.”

“Are you going to try to shoot me again?” he asks, though there’s neither fear nor accusation in his tone. He may as well have asked how the drive to Tadfield was. 

“Oh, heavens no! And I do apologize for that. I’m sure you understand that I was a bit over my head back then. In truth, I really didn’t want to hurt you. And now, well, I owe you a great deal of thanks.” The angel strides past Crowley, getting over whatever fear it is that’s held them both in place. Not fear of Adam per-say, more of what the memory of him holds for them both. “I presume your friends are hiding? Perhaps they should come out.”

Just then, a small mutt comes rushing forward, bounding through the snow and yipping like mad. It stops at Adam’s side, barking at the angel, tail wagging in nervous excitement. 

“Easy, Dog,” Adam chastises. “C’mon, boy, hush. Yeah, my friends are here. Are you here to pull us into a new adventure? Are people rising out of the dirt again to wage war against the earth, and you need me an’ Pepper’n’Brian’n’Wensley to help save the day?”

“Not quite,” Crowley drawls, shoving his hands in his pockets. Now that they aren’t moving, he’s able to take in just how quickly the heat of the day is bleeding out of the air. The very sunlight that’s hurting his eyes as it shines off the snow will sink below the horizon soon. “Came here seeking your help specifically. There uh, may be some more people rising out of the ground, but I think we’ve got it under control. Yeah, quite under control, don’t worry about that. No need to endanger a bunch of kids.”

“We’re not just kids!” calls a voice that he recognizes as the same one who launched the attack on them minutes ago. He spins around to find a little girl in a red parka with fuzzy white earmuffs glaring at him. “We helped Adam save the day once, and we’ll do it again!”

“You didn’t erase their memories, Adam?” Aziraphale mutters. “Why on earth not?”

“I think everyone deserves to remember whatever was important to remember about that day,” he replies evenly as Pepper stalks forward, and another child sneaks around from behind a pine tree, dropping an armful of poorly-shaped snowballs as he goes. 

“Well we only need to speak to you, so can you call off your small army for a mo’?”

“Actually, we want to stay with Adam in case you try to hurt him again,” chimes yet another child, this one crawling out from behind a large rock.

Four altogether. The angel and demon share a quick glance, affirming that yes, that’s how many they remembered. Presumably there aren’t any more Lost Boys lying in wait.

“Yeah, prove that you’re not armed!” challenges the boy with the misshapen snowballs.

“Or better yet, surrender right now!” the girl suggests. “Adam, we can take them back to Hogback Hill and torture them! Can we do that?”

“Oh, but we’ve brought a peace offering!” Aziraphale says quickly, presenting the small pastry box that he’s been carrying with him.

Silence falls as all four children hone in on the box, no doubt recognizing the green and gold-striped string securing the white cardboard. Tadfield is a small town, surely there’s only one bakery around, so they all know what’s inside.

“Are those cookies from Nellie’s?” the one boy finally asks hopefully.

“Indeed!” the angel beams. “And I must say, they look absolutely scrummy! Now, I really purchased these with the intent of gifting them to Adam, but perhaps he doesn’t mind sharing? We’ve come because…well, we’re rather in desperate need of some advice, and he might be helpful. So, while you’re welcome to the jammy tarts and Italian wedding cakes regardless, please let me know: would you consider giving us a little of your time?”

Adam watches him intently as he speaks, eyes settling just over Aziraphale’s shoulder. Crowley isn’t certain whether or not Adam can see his wings, or whether or not he sees how mangled Aziraphale’s essence is, but he certainly seems able to gauge that something is off. He takes his time staring, leaving the angel to rap the tips of his fingers against the box nervously, growing more and more restless the longer he’s under scrutiny. Likewise, the other children seem to grow a little impatient, no doubt caught between the desire to attack the two adults intruding upon their playtime and the desire to rush over and ask for biscuits like the little goblins they are.

Finally, the hellhound—apparently just Dog these days—gives a whine, and Adam snaps out of his trance, eyes slipping back to Aziraphale’s. “Okay,” he agrees. “It’s going to get dark soon, and my dad’ll kill me if I’m out too late, but I guess I can talk with you for a bit. Can we have the biscuits now though?” he turns to his friends. “You guys take them and go back to the Hill and wait for me there.”

“But Adam—”

“I won’t be long, Pepper” he promises.

“But we don’t want to leave you with—”

“Don’t worry, Brian, they’re alright for grown-ups, I can tell.”

“Actually, my mum has specifically said not to take sweets from strangers.”

“Oi, d’you want the jammy tarts or not?” Crowley snaps. “My friend here might’ve even added sommat dipped in chocolate, so why don’t you lot go investigate?”

“Chocolate?” breathes the one boy, Brian.

“Okay, fine,” concedes Pepper, and she’s the one to march up to Aziraphale and hold out her mittened-hands expectantly.

“Oh, wait,” he says, loosening the string on the box and opening it quickly to withdraw a biscuit, and for a minute, Crowley is going to make a comment at the angel for taking a treat that they bought explicitly for children, but then Aziraphale is handing a jammy tart to Adam. “I’m fine with your friends helping themselves, but I rather wanted to give you one myself. They’re one of my favorites, and I confess that I had a feeling that you probably like them as well, and oh, this must seem so silly to you—”

“Thanks,” Adam smiles broadly for the first time, accepting the procured sweet and taking a large bite, smearing jam all over his face in a way that will cease to be cute in the next few years. He’s still young enough that it manages to be endearing, and Crowley knows without seeing the angel’s face that he’s utterly smitten. “Nellie’s makes these the best. Even better’n my mum.”

“Yes, I quite like them with a strong cup of tea myself,” the angel agrees, snapping the string back over the box and placing it in Pepper’s hands. “I know this isn’t much of an apology given how we got off back in the summer, but, well…” he gestures uselessly, hands now free to flutter about in their frantic way.

“We’ve thought a lot about ways to thank you for what you did for us,” Crowley says, “yelling at that cryptic bloke with the black hood and the wings and his three idiot friends. Telling off our bosses and then Satan. And uh, y’know, saving the earth from the fires, the tornado, the Kraken, and restoring my…my car. And his bookshop,” he pops the ‘p’ loudly once again, growing uncomfortable himself. If he keeps speaking, he fears he’ll begin hissing his s’s. “Lot to thank you for, really.”

“Those weird people were your bosses?” Adam asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“Former bosses,” Crowley shrugs. “We quit. They were all into destroying the world, and me and Aziraphale here, well, we just weren’t cut out for the job.”

“And now we’re back here,” Aziraphale brings them full circle. “Hoping you can help us.”

Adam nods and turns to Pepper, then glances at the other two boys. “Guys, I’ll meet you at the fort soon. Don’t eat everything okay? And if there is a chocolate one, save me at least one, please?”

“My mum will angry if we ruin our appetites,” the one boy murmurs. He keeps squinting, like he can’t quite see them clearly, and Crowley remembers the snowman with the broken glasses. Oh.

“Actually, I think all of your parents will be in miraculously good spirits when you return home,” Aziraphale suggests cheerfully. “They won’t mind if you’re a bit late, or if you’ve snuck some sweets. And they’ll certainly be understanding that accidents happen, and if you need a new pair of glasses, well, that’s hardly the end of the world, is it?”

Crowley bites his lip to keep from smiling at the frivolous use of miracles blossoming forth from the angel. The air tingles slightly with the goodness he pushes forth, into the neighborhood. Adam seems to feel it too, because he takes another bite of his snack to hide his wide smile.

“Fine, we’ll go on ahead. But just send Dog if you need backup. We’ll come with the sled and we can torture these guys if they turn out to be double agents or bad guys or pirates or something.”

“Pirates don’t dress like that, stupid,” Pepper snaps, turning on her heel and leading them through the bushes. The trail they follow is a narrow footpath, and it’s really a wonder that they know where they’re going, that they don’t get lost in these woods. Human children are truly brave creatures. “If they were pirates, they’d have eyepatches and peg legs!”

“Maybe those sunglasses are a way to wear eyepatches without standing out so much.”

“That’s rubbish!”

The argument continues, but Crowley can no longer make it out as they wind their way deeper into the woods, leaving Dog sniffing the snow excitedly where flaky pastry crumbs have fallen as Adam continues to chew his jammy tart, eyes flicking from the angel to the demon expectantly.

Aziraphale claps his hands together, all nervous energy. “Well! Thank you again so much, Adam. For agreeing to speak with us despite our dropping in rather unannounced. And, well, thank you for everything else. As Crowley said, restoring my bookshop, his Bentley. The whole world owes you so much. My word…how can I ever begin to thank you enough?”

“Oh, this’ll do,” he responds, waving the sweet and speaking around a mouthful of jam. “Thanks. So, why d’you need my help? I know you’re not human. Can’t imagine you have problems you can’t solve with magic or superpowers or something cool like that. I don’t see why you need to consult me. I’m just a kid.”

“You’d be surprised,” Crowley deadpans.

“Adam, recently there was another skirmish between Hell and Earth. Crowley and I did everything we could to protect Earth, of course. But…well…”

“We have a casualty here. Angel, show him your wings.”

“Are you certain it’s wise to do so?”

“He’s seen ‘em before. Go on. If you could show Gabriel, surely you can show Adam.”

“Oh, very well,” he grumbles, and, sparing one last glance around to make sure no other children are lurking to witness it, he allows his wing to burst forth, even brighter than the snow around them.

Adam, blasé as can be, pops the last of his jammy tart into his mouth and chews thoughtfully. “Where’s the other one?”

“It ah, well…it was bitten off by a demon if you must know,” he says with a wince.

“Wicked!” and something alarmingly excited glints in his eyes. He was originally intended to be a being of destruction and death, after all.

“No, not wicked!” Crowley snarls. “Well, yes, wicked, but not in the sense that you mean. It was a cruel thing to do, kid, and now Aziraphale here is suffering!”

“You have feeling in your wings, then?” he asks. “Like, you can feel pain in them?”

“Of course we can!”

The gleam vanishes from his eyes, replaced with an empathy that surpasses his age. “How bad does it hurt?”

“Oh, to the point of near-constant distraction, to be perfectly frank,” the angel confesses, looking at the ground. “I’m having trouble concentrating on anything. It’s rather torturous. And you see, usually, we angels can simply heal ourselves with a quick miracle. Even if I couldn’t, Crowley here would typically be able to heal me.”

“But you’re not getting better.”

“No.”

“Is the wing gone for good?” he asks.

Aziraphale’s eyes widen. “Oh, I certainly hope not. It’s part of me! Part of what makes me ethereal! I can’t not get better, nor can I live in agony like this for the rest of my life, not knowing why!”

“Hush, angel, you don’t have to,” Crowley soothes, placing a hand on his arm as the angel’s anxiety revs up, his fingers coming alive like so many writhing snakes. “Adam can help. You, kid. You fixed everything once.”

Adam sucks a stray bit of jam from his thumb. “I only did what I thought was right,” he says defensively. 

“You put out the fires on the streets, quelled the tornadoes, the hurricanes. The clouds that were shaped like skulls, the fish that were raining from the sky. Cats stuck up in trees, probably. You set the world right again.”

“Maybe my imagination got out of control for a bit, but I just wanted things to be as they should.”

“If you did it before, you can do it again,” Crowley says with certainty, grabbing the angel by his upper arms and pushing him a bit closer to Adam. He feels him tense against the touch, barely tolerating it, but remaining quiet. “Heal him. Restore his wing to him the same way you restored his bookshop when it burned to ash. Can’t tell me that this is how he should look!”

Aziraphale huffs a soft breath of surprise at Crowley’s straightforward demand. The breath puffs, condensation in front of his lips. He stares down at Adam, tense and terrified and yes, also full of hope.

Adam looks back, equally surprised by the expectation placed before him. Perhaps he was expecting better payment than a lone biscuit. Finally, he looks from Aziraphale to Crowley, and ultimately back to the angel, expression softening apologetically. 

“I don’t think I can do that.”

Crowley’s nails bite into the angel’s coat in frustration. “What do you mean you _can’t do that_? Of course you can. You’re the Antichrist! You can do anything you want!”

“What I want is to just be a normal boy.”

“Don’t be stupid; you were always destined for more than that. Now go on and help him! Snap your fingers, or tap your heels together three times, or scrunch up your nose. Whatever it is you did last time you righted the world. Do it and heal Aziraphale, Adam. You’re the only one who can!”

“I think you’re wrong,” Adam challenges.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not the only one who can help him,” he turns those impossibly clear eyes to the angel. “I’m sorry that you’re suffering. It looks really painful. I can see the hurt floating all around you like a cloud, and it’s very sad to see. I’m sure if someone cut my arm off I’d be upset too, and want it back. But you’re not human, right? There’s something special about you. I’m really sorry, but I think if you want to get better, it has to come from you.”

There’s no condescension in Adam’s tone, but Crowley can feel it nonetheless: the last trace of hope that Aziraphale has held slips out of him. It’s almost physical, like a tendon snapping somewhere within his body: he’s certain he can feel it where his hands still rest on the angel’s arms, dissipating up into the cool air around them.

“Oh…I see. Well, thank you for that advice then, Adam…”

“No!,” the demon snaps, “don’t you dare say that, you bloody punk! He nearly died protecting this mess of a planet! Protecting you and all your little friends! And your stupid sled and your sodding tire swing and your wretched little dog!”

“ _Crowley!_ Do settle down, my dear boy! Adam is just a child and there’s no need—”

“Shut up, Aziraphale! He risked everything for your lot, kid, got that? For humanity! And the birds and the, the whales an’ the ducks and everything else on this _sss_ blessed rock! They almost burned him to a cris _ss_ p. And we’ve come to you, the only being on earth who can help, and you’re _sss_ aying it’s _sss_ gotta come from him?”

“I guess that did sound kind of mean, didn’t it?” Adam asks, looking thoughtful rather than scared by Crowley’s agitation. “I don’t mean to sound like it’s your own fault you’re hurt. That’s silly. I guess what I’m saying is…I can’t do anything for you. Whatever antidote you need can’t come from a kid and his dog. I don’t know how I know, but I just know that I can’t help fix you. Really, I’m very sorry.”

“You’re _sorry_?!”

“Crowley, enough! Don’t you raise your voice at him like that!” Aziraphale whips around and pierces him with a glare. “It’s unbecoming. He’s just a boy. We tried, alright?” And then his glare melts into a look of heartbreak, his voice softening. “We tried.” Another soft puff of breath as he says the word, and the condensed air freezes as it leaves his mouth, falling to the ground with a soft thump. Crowley’s not sure if it’s his own despair or Aziraphale’s that literally chills his words like that.

“Cool,” Adam intones softly, in spite of himself.

Crowley gapes at the angel, mouth opening and closing like a fish. He can’t think straight. There’s a ringing in his ears. He clenches and unclenches his hands, glancing down only to realize that his scales have begun to materialize over his wrists. He pushes his sunglasses up on his nose further, realizing his eyes must be a sight to behold, and not wanting to scare Adam.

The boy knows what he looks like, but still. 

Control, he needs to control himself.

“It’s starting to get late,” Adam hedges, watching the two men stare each other down. “I should get back to my friends—”

“Yep,” Crowley forces out. “Go. Thanks _ss_ anyway.”

“Thanks for the biscuits,” Adam directs these words at Aziraphale, who looks rapidly back and forth between the boy and the demon. “And again, I’m sorry about your wing. I hope you get better.”

“No need to thank me,” he replies. “You’re the one who saved our world, Adam. Get home safe. Oh, do wait, before you go, come here, you should really zip up your coat…”

Crowley watches as the angel steps forward and zips the boy’s winter coat up all the way, covering his entire neck up to his chin. As an afterthought, he wipes a smear of jam from Adam’s cheek. In spite of his internal panic, that single, soft gesture punches the breath out of Crowley. That Aziraphale is still capable of such gentleness, such kindness, even as his world is shattered, is enough to give him the rush of strength he needs to control his temper, to ease his scales back beneath his skin.

“You and your friends, make sure none of you have any sugar on your faces before you go home for supper, or else you’ll give yourselves up, understand?”

The concept of covering up one’s transgression is so un-angelic, and the irony isn’t lost on Adam, who smiles wryly and nods. “Thanks. We have a system for situations like this, we’ll all double and triple-check so our parents won’t find out. We’re not amateurs, you know. Thanks again for the biscuits. Did I ever get your names?”

“You can call me Mr. Fell. And my friend here is Mr. Crowley.”

“So you have different last names?” Adam asks.

“Why would we have the same last name?” Aziraphale asks as Crowley goes still with shock at the assumption the boy has made. “It’s not like all supernatural entities share a common surna—”

“Get on then, boy. You and your mangy little mutt,” Crowley snaps, though not too harshly. “I’ve got to get this idiot back to London before the snow picks up again.”

“Right,” Adam is smart enough to recognize the urgency of the dismissal. “Good luck, Mr. Fell. Bye!”

With that, he turns and dashes down the embankment, Dog yipping at his heels. He’s out of sight within seconds, disappearing into the forest, effortless as a deer or rabbit.

Once they’re alone, Crowley allows himself to return to seething. “So we drove all the way out here…to buy a box of biscuits for some kids.”

“It would appear that way,” Aziraphale agrees, looking lost now that he doesn’t have anything to hold and distract himself with. His hands assess the negative space in front of them. “Well. We’ve wasted our time out here before. This is really no different from the first time we came out here together, in fact.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That time we came to the former abbey looking for information about the Antichrist,” he replies. “That too was a red herring. We thought we’d stroll in, peruse some paperwork, find the boy. Instead, some rude man shot my nice greatcoat with paint. We’ve made plenty of mistakes before, and the stakes were a great deal higher back then. So don’t take this so personally, Crowley. I appreciate that you were willing to come this far on my behalf. Let’s just get back to the car and go home. It’s going to be dark soon, and it’s getting dreadfully cold.”

“How can you be so…so cool about this all?”

“Hm?”

“So blasé? Am I supposed to pretend this is fine, that our last hope didn’t just get extinguished, Aziraphale? I know you’re a seasoned liar, but don’t you think this is a little excessive, even for you?”

The angel turns to him, affronted. “I beg your pardon, Crowley? Angels hardly lie. Well, most of the time they don’t, anyway.”

“But you’re dissimulat—dissima—you’re lying right now! Acting like you don’t even care that Adam just blew us off with his merry ‘I want to be a normal boy’ drivel. If he can’t fix this, what other plans do you have?”

“We’ll figure something out,” he says sternly, head bobbing as he tries to modulate his voice, quell his rising aggravation. “We always do.”

“Why are you stamping down how you really feel, huh?” for once, just once, he’d like for the angel to acknowledge how scary this is so he doesn’t feel so hysterical. He’d seen just the faintest glimpse the previous day when Aziraphale had shed a few tears in pain after Gabriel had departed. It feels as though calling the terrifying situation what is is will somehow help unite them against all this confusion. “You don’t have to lie to stay in Heaven’s good graces anymore, you idiot! It’s just me. And guess what? I’ve already seen the nastiest sides of you and chosen to stick around. So quit lying to my face!”

“You’re the one who seems rather put out by all this,” he answers sharply.

“Yeah, I’m bloody put out! I’m livid! This _ss_ …oh not that again!” he groans, but he can’t fight the way he hisses as he works himself up, carrying on despite the humiliation that simmers on his cheeks as he lisps like a ground-crawler. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go! Anytime you’re in danger, I fix it. Make it right. ‘s what I do. And ever since you stepped in, did the protecting for me, I’ve been helpless, watching you founder. You think I enjoy knowing how useless I am t’you?!”

“Useless? To me? You saved my life, Crowley! Just like you always do.”

“But I wasn’t fast enough to protect you like I always have been, I couldn’t stop you from getting hurt—”

“I really wish you’d stop building your entire character up around your capacity to serve me,” Aziraphale mutters, and Crowley spins on his heel, throwing his hands in the air in his fury. That’s it.

“Shut up! You don’t get to say that to me!”

“Why ever not? It’s true, and I thought you wanted me to tell you how I really feel!”

_Because you’ve never had a problem with it before, you selfish bastard,_ he thinks. _So you don’t get to go breaking my heart, pushing me back away from you now_. Instead he says, “because no angel’s ever going to tell me how to prioritize my sodding life!”

“Listen to yourself,” Aziraphale says, “being defiant just for sake of arguing. Crowley, this isn’t about me. This is about the Earth. It is in danger and if we don’t—”

“Don’t try changing to subject to sound holier than you are, you smug bastard. We didn’t come out to Tadfield to save the earth; I drove us all the way out here for you.”

“I…well,” he flounders.

“So don’t pretend you’re not affected by this. I know you are. ‘M scared too, angel. If I can’t find a way to make this all right, then what am I? I’m the one who always makes it right for you.” He looks at the angel, remembers the sight of him on the day of Armageddon, threatening Crowley with his bumbling ‘do something or I’ll never speak to you again.’ Always so unshakably faithful in Crowley’s imagination, in his capacity to right the world on command for him.

_And I would. I’d move the earth and all the stars for you, he thinks. You sick of the heliocentric model? Want to be placed in the diametric center of this galaxy? I’d do it in a heartbeat if it’d make you smile. But it wouldn’t, because I can’t solve the mystery of what’s cursed you._

“If I can’t figure this out, I’m useless.” he doesn’t repeat the words to coax pity out of the angel; he says them to gloss over the _what good am I do you then?_ that bubbles in his throat.

A series of expressions glide over the angel’s face, fast-moving clouds as a new front settles in. His hands freeze, fingers locked together in front of his chest, and his lips tremble like he wants to speak, but forgets that he needs to push air through his throat to do so. The result is a look so utterly ineffective the demon wants to snarl. Or maybe sob. “Oh, Crowley,” he finally sighs. “I think you have the wrong idea. Yes, I’m certain that you’ve got this matter entirely backwards, my dear boy.”

“And how is that?”

“You are not, nor have you ever been useless. You are my constant, the Achilles to my Patroclus, my stalwart companion” he’s blathering, nervous, clearly. He inhales, remembering how speech works, then presses on, urgently. “Your presence has been the most grounding thing throughout this ordeal, and certainly throughout most of our time here on Earth—”

“Glad to know my loyalty makes you feel less anxious, angel, but my point is that we’re at an impasse here,” he cuts him off. He hardly feels worthy of the nice gilded praise Aziraphale will craft on the spot just to soothe his frayed nerves. Instead, he brings the focus away from himself,, back to the angel. “You’re usually the one who comes up with solutions to these sorts of things. It was you who proposed coming to Tadfield back when we were trying to find the Antichrist. You were the one who sought me out and ordered me to the airbase after you dis…right before it all went down. And you’d figured it all out on your own by then and had a plan. Point is, it’s always been you who innovates; you use that clever brain and fix everything—” he’s cut off by a full-body shiver. The sun, now that it’s begun to pitch down behind the treetops, seems to be accelerating its decline. The air has gone from cold and crisp to frosty.

“Get in the car, please,” Aziraphale begs. “We’ll figure this out yet. I’ll return to my books, and I’ll find some clue in them, something I’ve overlooked. Perhaps I should revisit my collection of prophecies; they can be quite informative. Agnes Nutter wasn’t the only prophetess whose clairvoyance has altered fates!”

_He’s deflecting_ , Crowley thinks as they clamber back into the Bentley, kicking clumps of snow from their shoes and the bottoms of their trousers before sitting inside. _He’s deflecting because he doesn’t want to acknowledge how scared he is_. Even after all this time, he can’t just be honest about his feelings, and that alarms Crowley almost as much as his un-healable wound. Their ride back to London is silent, two beings lost so deep in their own thoughts, they both almost forget that they’re not alone.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley takes a calculated risk to seek out Ziminiar, but boy is he bad at math.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! I'm really sorry for the long delay in updates. Hopefully this chapter makes up for it! It's a bit of a turning point, and after this chapter, the story should be winding down. Likely no more than two chapters to go after this one, depending on how long certain scenes wind up being.
> 
> I hope everyone is staying safe and taking care during these very stressful times. Please know that you can always reach out to me if you need to chat and distract yourself <3
> 
> As ever, thanks so much for reading!

The next day is the first day that Aziraphale doesn’t leave the bookshop as he’d begun to do every afternoon. Instead, he holes himself up in his study, reading glasses perched on his nose, pouring through ancient tomes, gloved hands ensuring they will not be damaged. The angel treats his books with a delicacy that Crowley has always admired and resented. It always seemed a waste to him, giving so much care to things that were not even sentient enough to appreciate it. Kindness ought not be squandered on the material. Still, what a sight, those pale, careful hands worshipping pages, smoothing them down, his mouth opening sometimes as he takes in particularly exciting passages, his eyes completely focused. The demon has lost his companion for weeks on end as he has studied and translated certain texts over the years. It’s taught him that you don’t have to understand something to appreciate it. Appreciating the angel’s devotion to the written language is enough.

So he feels a little bad as he steps into the study, hands jammed as deep into his pockets as they can go (not very). Not surprisingly, the angel does not look up when he enters, so he has to clear his throat, and ultimately, speak up.

“Oi. Angel. ‘M popping out for a tic.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale snaps up, startled out of his intense focus. “Now when you say ‘a tic,’ you do mean—”

“I mean I’ll be back in time for tea. This day, this calendar year. I uh, may have been acting a bit histrionic when I proposed the whole ‘leaving for a century’ thing.”

“I’m not sure if histrionic is the word I would have chosen,” he concedes coolly, but his posture relaxes somewhat. “But if you’re telling me that you’ll drop that silly notion of disappearing for the next few decades, I’ll be much happier for it.”

“‘m sorry, alright? I felt like my back was to a wall and that maybe we’d both be better off that way. Even when I’m saying things you don’t want to hear, I’m still operating with your best interest in mind, Aziraphale, you’ve got to believe me.”

“Oh, Crowley…I know that.”

One of the books strewn across the desk is Hildegard von Bingen’s _Causae et Curae_. Aziraphale had clung to the book like it was a life preserve during the plagues that swept through Europe. Those had been long centuries for the both of them: hard to socialize with humans and make merry in their intellectual circles when they were all dying off so rapidly. Watching the mothers bury their children had been particularly hard on Crowley. Aziraphale had spent much of his time in monasteries, teaching monks medicine. Although such trying times made them both eager for one another’s company, especially once the Arrangement had been put into place, they had found themselves keeping respectful distances instead.

Something about sharing their mutual looks of grief had felt too raw and intimate: too intrusive.

It had been much easier to fall back into a more casual friendship once the Renaissance got underway. It helped that the food got a little better too. And oh, the wine. Sitting in vineyards in Italy after watching half of Eurasia’s population sink underground had been revelatory, their laughter and smiles around one another had been nervous for the first few meetings, and then, like the sun stealing over the sunny knolls, immediate, all-encompassing, life-giving.

Not life in the sense of their immortal, timeless souls.

Life in the very human meaning: sensory, emotive, ephemeral, precious.

These memories pass through Crowley’s mind in the second it takes him to peel himself off the doorframe, to step back.

“As long as you understand then, angel. You can be so smart about some things, and then so unbelievably daft about others.”

“Don’t let an unkind thing be the last thing you say before you leave this place dear boy,” Aziraphale says, and if Crowley didn’t know better, he would suspect that the angel is trying to drag the moment out, to suspend Crowley in the threshold for as long as he can. “Can you at least tell me where you’re going? Certainly not back to Tadfield to bother poor young Adam again?”

“No. That stupid boy and his snot-nosed friends; if we never see them again, you won’t find me complaining!”

“Then where to?”

“Well,” he pushes his sunglasses up further on the bridge of his nose. “Plants, y’see. Felt rather out of sorts getting upset and going all snakey on the boy yesterday. I know that you don’t understand it, but yelling at them, making sure they’re in order, it gives me a sort of control over my own head, kinda. Can’t quite find the words for it, really.” It’s not true, but lying about feeling guilty for snapping at Adam feels like something Aziraphale could consider feasible. 

Sure enough, his expression softens considerably. “Crowley. Whatever methods you employ to feel more secure, I applaud,” he replies delicately. “I know I’ve been a tad…testy with you lately, for which I apologize. But your attempts to hold yourself together for me are…I do hope you realize that they don’t go unappreciated.”

“Right, if we’re done being sentimental, I’ve a Bentley that needs driving. I’ll be back soon, and remember, call out if you need me, okay? I’ll hear you.”

“Of course,” he continues to watch Crowley as strides down the hall towards the front entrance.

“Will you be all right alone, Aziraphale?”

The angel furrows his brow a little bit, and although the movement is utterly innocuous, it lances Crowley. Because although Crowley paced and worried and nearly lost his mind when Aziraphale left him alone for a few hours, he knows that the angel will be perfectly content throughout his absence, if he even notices it.

It’s not the first time he’s had a realization like that. The pain just keeps building up and amplifying over the years, magma cooling over a landmass, only to be covered in more centuries later. So the mass builds higher and higher, and the magma is never less hot as it passes over. Each decade or so, the imbalance between their affections for one another crystalizes more, and he is helpless to fight it.

“I’ll be fine, Crowley. I have quite a bit of research ahead of me, plus I’m starting to think it might be time to stock up on new books. It’s a considerable project I have laid before me, and if I must solve this crisis myself, I’ll need to amass an even larger army.” He taps the _Causae et Curaeto_ solidify his point. Bless the angel who thinks that buying some more books will help him regrow a wing that has been hewn off by a demon.

“I see you’ve been dipping into Hildegard of Bingen. Try not to stumble too hard down Memory Lane. The fourteenth century’s come and gone, no need to give it any more allowances’n historians already have, dontcha think?”

“She was such a brilliant woman, though. Not that her insights were enough to prevent what what happen two centuries after her death…but such is often the way with humans.”

“Yeah,” he rubs the back of his neck, can’t think of anything else to say that won’t alarm the angel. So he simply heads for the door, counting down from five hundred.

“Oh, Crowley!” he spins on his heel to face the angel.

“Yes? Shall I pick up something for you to eat on my way back? Been a while since you’ve indulged in any scones, hasn’t it?”

Aziraphale smiles wanly. “I was only going to say: the bitter cold is absolutely dreadful. Please take one of the scarves I have hung up by the front door, won’t you? I’m partial to the Burberry one myself, but the black one—oh, or the gray one I picked up at Harrods—would both look good on you. Take whichever you like.”

Crowley nods his head, obediently selects the black scarf, soft as a mother’s coo to her baby, wraps it thankfully around his neck. He’s halfway down the block when he realizes he forgot to keep counting down. Aziraphale’s attentiveness has that effect on him.

He starts over again from five hundred, walking in the direction of his flat. When he hits zero, he turns on his heel, miracles himself to the building across London where there is an escalator that was installed several decades ago, an escalator that goes down.

Seven minutes from the time he started counting, Crowley strides into Hell.

The walls are slick and cold and oozy with some sort of mold. Repulsive, yet anyone with the minutest degree of sentience cannot deny the strange, intrusive suggestion that perhaps it might be worth trying to lick them. The ceiling is perpetually leaking, the fluorescent lights perpetually flickering, and the new recruits, freshly anointed with boiling sulfur and pupil-blowing fear, are perpetually stumbling around in disbelief, muttering to themselves and waiting to wake up from a bad dream. Screams punch through the air from various rooms of torture, situated at random along quieter office rooms, where demons sign off on contracts, Faustian and more mundane (someone has to authorize the evolution of the avocado plant to go brown and mushy almost as soon as it is perfectly ripe). The placement of torture chambers and office spaces is very intentional: one paperclip out of place, and you could find yourself getting booted across the hall.

Crowley strides past a sobbing gaggle of new recruits, heading to the headquarters he’s so familiar with, to the room with the (admittedly rather stylish) throne. He almost feels disappointed that his mere presence is not enough to trigger any alarms, but as he wades through hopeless souls, through fellow fallen angels that he doesn’t know very well, there is no recognition. He’s just another face in the crowd.

Up in Heaven, he’d never felt like he’d belonged, like there was any connection holding him to the angels drifting around him, harmoniously worldbuilding. He’d never felt any better in Hell. A loser in both realms, alone and uncoordinated amidst a mass of souls struggling towards some stupid, incomprehensible goal. All he wants is to return to the bookshop, make a cup of tea for Aziraphale and watch him drink it.

He's not as scared as he should be, perhaps. In fact, being up in Heaven had been far more harrowing. While his nerves have begun to ignite, and the memories of some of more violent encounters he's had down here over the millennia are certainly surfacing, he's not about to let that deter him, especially not when he's making such good time. No longer on the brink of a cataclysmic war, Hell has lowered its defenses for now, and with his head bent down, Crowley is just another demon with a set of feathering wings, a bizarre sway to his hips, and a really nice jacket.

With no one around to tell him otherwise (or even to bat an eye at him, really, the security is a shame is what it is), he makes his way to the door of his former boss and barges right in, human heart pounding at the sight of his superior, head bent and discussing something with another familiar face, Dagon.

“Hey, guys.”

The prince of Hell jerks up out of their slouch, face immediately contorting into rage. “How dare you interrupt me without—C-Crowley?!”

“The one and only,” he had devised a plan as he approached the throne room, a simple one: _act the way Aziraphale would expect you to act_. And thus, he has to speak a hell of a lot more smoothly than feels reasonable given his company. “So great to see you. You’re looking well. Have you done something with your hair? Whatever it is, the flies seem to love it, going by the timbre of their buzzing.”

Beelzebub, who has never been one to miss an opportunity to say anything derisive, can only gape, cold blue eyes wide and hands clenched on the armrests of their throne. Beside them, Dagon looks equally alarmed. She’s the one who manages to speak what they both must be thinking:

“What in Satan’s name are you doing here?”

“Came to have a little chat. No, I’m not armed with holy water or anything of that sort, so you lot can both relax. I promise I haven’t come with any intent to hurt,” he holds up his hands in a supplicating sort of way, then quickly adds, “though I could of course, so don’t try anything.”

“A little chat?” Beelzebub has found their voice again. “Last time I saw you, you asked ex _zzz_ plicitly to be left alone, to be granted asylum on Earth and to never be bothered again.”

“I do recall that, yes. Archangel Michael was here, wasn’t she?” he looks around, as though she might have been crouching behind a desk or chair, waiting to hop out. “She still down here? How about my old friend Hastur?” 

Thankfully, both demons seem to be buying his casual words, because they keep darting glances at one another, frantic, all while staring at him in obvious alarm. Although he knows that his terror trumps their own, he can’t deny how flavorful it is in his mouth: he’d like another taste. How many threats can one make to the prince of Hell before luck evaporates? 

“We, we have not attempted to harm you, demon Crowley,” the prince speaks. “Nobody has sent you any paperwork to fill out, you’ve been left to live out your day _zzz_ , an outcast on Earth. This is exactly as you requested. So why are you here?”

“Oh really? You haven’t attempted to harm me? Interesting, because just last week I was almost maimed by an old coworker,” he replies.

“What?” Dagon asks, and her curiosity is beginning to outshine her fear. Oh, but Dagon always did love to gossip. “Who?”

“You two are familiar with Ziminiar, I’ve no doubt. He was one of the unfortunate idiots constrained by King Solomon back, ooh, dunno, couple hundred years ago, perhaps. Or millennia. Hard to keep track of all the demons being constrained and slain by prophets and angel-assisted mortals, isn’t it?”

“Z _zz_ iminiar?” Beelzebub steeples their fingers together, arches a brow. “He, and the other seventy-one demons constrained by Solomon were of course released from their pact by the Antichrist right before Armageddon so that they could defeat Heaven alongside their brethren.”

“Right, so all the old bonds and chains that had constrained demons over Earth’s history were rendered moot by the kid Adam?”

“Correct,” they reply. “Are you telling me that you’ve seen Z _zz_ iminiar?”

“Well let me answer that question with a question of my own: have you?”

“Not…recently,” Dagon murmurs, starting a bit from the sharp look Beelzebub casts her way for speaking out of turn.

“How about Asag? Nasty smell to him. Or Marchosias, the wolf-griffin-looking dolt? Dresses like it’s still 1632. You seen either of those buggers around here lately?”

“You’re saying that they all approached you on earth?” Beelzebub asks. 

“Approached? I was attacked by them! Naturally they didn’t stand a chance. You two have seen first-hand what I’m capable of withstanding. Three demons against me? I mean, sure, one of them was a king at one point, but it was hardly a fair fight from the beginning.”

“What’ve you done to them them?” Dagon asks, eyebrows creeping so far up her forehead they may very well continue over her hairline and towards the ceiling. It’s validating to know just how much of an effect their stunt has had on her, how scared she must have been to see his body sink into a tub of holy water without dissolving. He’s never known the great Dagon to look so tense. “Have you killed them, Crowley?”

“Asag and Marchosias, uh, yeah. Ziminiar fled like a coward, and I haven’t been able to track him down since. I assume he’s returned here to hide out until he fancies a rematch. Now, Lord Beelzebub. Beez. Boss-o-my-heart,” he smiles at them, trying to imagine that he has the power to strike them off of the throne and dismember them. “I need to know: did you authorize this?”

“I’m not obligated to answer that,” they answer stonily.

“Oh come on. I just want to know whether or not you gave the okay to send three demons into a demilitarized zone months after a war was narrowly avoided, and to attempt to have me assassinated after I proved to you that I’m immune to Hell’s pathetic attempts at fear mongering,” he claps his hands like it’s all rather a simple matter. “That’s all. Just a ‘yes,’ or ‘no’ will do. You could blink once for ‘yes,’ twice for ‘no,’ if you prefer. Or say it in another language, if that’s easier.”

“Demon Crowley,” they say, “did you come down to Hell to speak to me, or to Ziminiar?” Oh, of course Beelzebub would be quick to throw another demon under the bus to ensure their own safety. If he’s around, it would make the prince’s job easier to oust him.

Crowley knows his snake eyes are expanding at the prospect of a rematch. If he’s truly here, and Beelzebub has the power to summon him right away, everything could be over in a matter of seconds. He takes a breath he does not strictly need, only to hold his form in place, to keep his scales from popping out. This is the moment he’s been waiting for. Let Beelzebub call him in. He’ll have Ziminiar’s skull split open before he’s made it all the way through the threshold. He’ll grab him by the wings and rip them off, pluck them out of his back like weeds ripped up from a garden. And then he’ll bludgeon him with those very wings until he’s more liquid than demon.

“If you can bring him here, yeah, I’d love a word with him.”

“Well,” they answer coolly, “that will be impossible as I have no idea where he is. Haven’t heard from him or seen him in months.

And just like that they excitement bleeds from Crowley. “So you didn’t authorize the attack?”

“Why would they do that?” Dagon snaps. “After you made it clear you wanted nothing to do with us here. The goal of Hell is to ultimately overthrow Heaven and kill every last angel, not to devise stupid punishments for traitors like you.” She sneers, and her sharp teeth, dirty and sporting the same kind of mold that the walls have, gleam in the pale light. “We demons used to be petty, it’s true. But these days we’re smarter! Hyper-focused on our goal of destroying Heaven. We don’t have time to waste on worms like you.”

“Did the two of you have a beef back when you worked for us?” Beelzebub asks. “Becau _zzz_ I don’t want to be in the middle of an old dispute between two shitty employee _zzz_. If you must fight it out, do it on your own time, and send me the notification when one of you is slain.”

“No, no ‘beef,’ my lord,” he replies. “He came with the desire to level Earth, actually. Asag and Marchosias had been roped in, cronies really, doubt the two of ‘em had a brain cell to share.”

“Hmph,” Dagon rolls her eyes in agreement. Despite her obvious wariness of his own potential deadliness, she seems remarkably unfazed by the news of their deaths, unashamed to mock them now. Dagon has always been a model demon in that regard.

“While he was engaging me in battle…there was…a casualty. Someone who was helping me. They were injured by him.”

“Z _zz_ iminar killed a human?” Beelzebub asks. “That should have been reported to me.”

“That’s going to be a nightmare to file,” Dagon hisses.

“No, no deaths. No humans.”

“Ah, then you can only be referring to the angel you’ve been consorting with,” Beelzebub inuits, and Crowley isn’t fast enough to wipe the agitated look off of his face. Beelzebub has always been so very quick to get to the point. “Z _zz_ iminiar landed a good blow, did he?” they have the audacity to smile at him. “Good.”

He sees it in his mind’s eye: him walking right up to the throne, arm swinging back before the prince of Hell can process what’s about to happen, punching them for saying something so blasphemous about his angel.

Then of course Dagon will yell for help, and he’ll be outnumbered and killed in a matter of seconds. So he doesn’t do that. He simply scowls instead.

“The angel’s wing was severed by Asag's teeth, and it hasn’t regenerated. I don’t know if it’s some sort of curse or hex, or if he had some kind of poison in his mouth, but I need to know how to heal the angel. So he can remain protecting the neutral ground that is Earth, obviously. Ziminiar was close to him, he should know the answer."

“What was that angel's name?” Dagon presses, making his fists clench. “I think Hastur knows it…gotta remember to ask him.”

“I don’t know where Ziminiar I _zzz_ ,” the prince cuts her off, glaring at Crowley. “So if you’re looking for a fight, you mu _zzz_ t look elsewhere.”

“You’re the prince of Hell! How can you not know where he is?” he stamps his foot, hoping to intimidate. Dagon looks alarmed, but Beelzebub just looks annoyed now. He remembers suddenly that he has the tooth, extracted by Gabriel, from Aziraphale’s wing. He fumbles in the breast pocket of his blazer, stomps forward to hold it under his former boss’s nose.

They look at it, unimpressed. “What iz _zz_ this supposed to be?”

“Asag’s tooth! This bloody thing was jammed in the angel’s wing after he attacked him. Can’t you, I don’t know, track him down with it?”

“Like a bloodhound?” Beelzebub snorts, and Dagon actually has the nerve to laugh. It’s the happiest they’ve both been since he entered the room.

“We could give this to that Disposable Demon, my lord! Give him a good whiff and then order him to sniff Ziminiar out!”

“An ex _zzz_ ellent use of our time,” the prince deadpans. “I’m a demon, not a tooth fairy, so get that grotty thing out from under my nose before I shove it up yours.”

Instead, Crowley throws it across the room, certain that he no longer wants anything to do with it. Might as well leave it in Hell where it belongs. “So if you don’t know where he is, you’ve got to help me find him then,” he insists. “He’s mucking up the peace between Heaven and Hell and Earth. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Something crosses their face then, and Crowley realizes that he’s in for it. “Do you understand the mess you created when you and that damn angel urged the boy to call off Armageddon?” they growl, voice slow, like each word must squeeze out of tightly clenched teeth, one at a time. There is murderous intent behind each syllable. “Do you realiz _zz_ e how much mutiny I have had to endure? To bring under control? The _zz_ e months have been an endless cycle of striking fear back into the hearts of rebellious demon _zzz_ who were looking for glory and instead were sent back to their office chairs to file paperwork for the next unknown number of millennia. And I have stood at the mast, wrangling with anyone who dares question why we are not currently dancing on the ashes of the Pearly Gates. So no, I don’t know where Z _zz_ iminar is, and I don’t care. If he’s making your life difficult, I applaud him. Nor do I care about the celestial plaything you picked up on Earth—”

Dagon smirks and Crowley feels his cheeks heat up in rage and shame.

“He can Fall for all I care: if I see his face down here, I’ll sentence him to a an eternity of torment. And as for you. Go forth, Crowley. Find Z _zz_ iminiar. And if I should happen to come across him before you do,” they cross one leg over the other, a gesture that Crowley has learned over the millennia means that the conversation is over. “I’ll tell him to hurry up and finish what he started, killing you. I’ve no new _zzz_ for you. Now get the _Heaven_ out of my office before I call in for backup.”

He exhales, and in the time it takes him to do so, he understands how Aziraphale must have felt when Adam refused to help. This was it: his last long shot at solving this issue. If he could have cowed Beelzebub into helping him out, into agreeing to track down Ziminiar, maybe even punishing him for heading to Earth…but how was he supposed to have known about the mutinies the prince of Hell had been dealing with? Beelzebub’s resentment has become its own unexpected weapon: as soon as Hell ceased to be a threat to him, it also ceased to be a potential source of knowledge or support.

He was a fool not to think this through.

The room fades out of focus for a moment, his vision darkening, and he feels utterly alone, wings heavy on his back, head swimming with guilt. This is it. There is no way out of this. 

And if that’s the case, it’s time to adjust to the rest of his life.

“Right. Well, if you see him, tell him I’m looking for him, wont’ you?” he asks pathetically, turning on his heel, still feeling dazed.

Truly, what happens next is not something he’ll ever be able to explain. His back is to Beelzebub and Dagon. He cannot see, but he can sense the flick of Beelzebub’s wrist. And though there is absolutely no rational explanation, he knows to raise his hand, brace himself, and focus on controlling the fire.

Because suddenly there is a ball of Hellfire blasting at him. It’s a warm, pleasant heat, not unlike stepping into a bathtub. And if it were a few months ago, with Aziraphale standing here in his body, he would have burnt to a crisp, instantly slaughtered by the heat of the cursed flame. Fortunately, he is Anthony J Crowley, fallen angel, reject demon, Earth-dweller.

But Beelzebub was not certain of that.

They had suspected.

He holds up a single finger and gathers the flame there, all but extinguishing it before slipping his hands into his pockets. “Thanks for the light, but I can see the door just fine,” he quips.

“Get…out…” they hiss. Oh yes, they were most certainly hoping he would die.

Instead, he makes a show of brushing embers from his clothes, shaking his head at the strong sulfuric smell. “Pee-yew, this stuff reeks, doesn’t it? All the very worst of Hell really. They could bottle this stuff and sell it as a prank up on Earth. Hm…now. There’s an idea. Well, have a good evening, Dagon. Lord Beezy. I’ll try not to swing by anytime soon if I can help it. Ciao!”

He makes his way back out, head down, hoping not to run into anyone he recognizes. His fingers rub together in his pocket, cradling the small flicker of flame that he surreptitiously slipped into his pocket as he walked out of the office.

While he can withstand and even, with great effort, control Hellfire, his low rank as a demon makes it impossible to generate his own. Might be a useful thing to have somewhere down the line, he figures.

And boy are they going need all the useful tools they can get, he reflects. What an incredibly impulsive, stupid thing to do. _What you were expecting to happen_ , he berates himself as he heads back up, ascends the escalator, returns to Earth’s mantel, then its crust, steps out into a frigid, wet wind in the United Kingdom. _Did you really think Ziminiar would just pop in as though we’d scheduled a meeting together? Or that Beelzebub would be so afraid they would just agree to punish him and help? Look at the distance Gabriel kept: of course they wanted to keep me at arm’s length._

“S _ss_ tupid!” he snarls at a random passerby who cowers away as though expecting to be struck. Instead, he hastens his pace towards Soho. He’s out of ideas. If the powers of Hell cannot help him, no one will. It’s a short stroll back to the shop since he’s walking at such a fast clip, but all the way his cheeks burn in shame, practically steaming as icy sleet lashes down on his uncovered face.

Just as he reaches out towards the door to enter the bookshop, it flies open of its own accord, and he’s nearly trampled by Aziraphale, who is hastening to get out like Satan is on his heels.

“Angel?” he’d been expecting to find Aziraphale in the exact place he’d left him, gathering dust amongst his beloved tomes. “What’s wrong?”

“Crowley?” he freezes, eyes very wide and very blue compared to the gunmetal gray sky, streets, and atmosphere around them. There’s a panic in the crease above his brow, the tight set of the muscles in his face.

“And you were chastising me for going out without a scarf?” he criticizes, pointing to the great coat that the angel has not yet bothered to button up, to his bare throat. No hat, no gloves. He was leaving in a hurry. “You’ll get cold, angel, where are you going?”

“Where I am going? Where were _you_?” he demands, voice careening into a higher pitch than usual. There aren’t many people out on the streets in the midst of this nasty weather, but Crowley is certain that anyone who hears the angel’s tone will stare. “Where have you been? I couldn’t find you anywhere!”

“Ah,” he pauses, mouth open like a fish when he realizes that Aziraphale had reached out to sense his essence while he was gone. And there’s no way he could have sensed him all the way in Hell. He remembers the icy pick of fear that had lanced his chest when Aziraphale had first gone out several days ago, disappearing for a few seconds until Crowley could push out a little further, latch onto his presence. He knows all too well what it’s like to keep pushing and to never find that familiar presence. _Where are you, you idiot? I can’t find you!_ “Angel, I’m sorry—”

“Where the hell were you?!”he repeats, louder now, and it registers with Crowley that Aziraphale is becoming downright hysterical. He saw it happen once before, when news of the Library of Alexandria burning down reached them. He saw it again when Heaven sent him a strict note indicating in no uncertain terms that he would be instantly removed from Earth for good should he continue to try intervening with the development of the nuclear bomb.

The angel very seldom loses his composure, but Crowley is quick to hustle him back into the bookshop, to slam the door and shield them both from the flesh-hungry wind outside. He places his hands on Aziraphale’s shoulders, a little surprised when the angel, normally not one for physical intimacy, returns the gesture, clasping both of his shoulders hard enough that, were Crowley human, it would hurt.

“Oh yes, it’s really you, isn’t it?” he babbles. “Take off your glasses, please. I just want to be sure. I need to see. To know that this isn’t one of Hell’s tricks. Or Heaven for that matter. Oh Crowley. Good Lord, it is you, thank goodness.”

Dazed, the demon obeys, pulling off his sunglasses and slipping them into his coat pocket before returning to holding his friend steady, trying to get him to settle down. “Of course it’s me. What’s happened to you? You were fine when I left, angel. Breathe, breathe, it’ll be okay.”

“I was fine,” Aziraphale agrees, eyes honing in on Crowley’s and narrowing. “And I must confess I began to fret quite instantly, but I figured you needed some time to yourself, I know I’ve been driving you batty, my dusty old shop has surely begun to feel quite suffocating to you. I didn’t want to pry, truly I didn’t. Only I became so worried that I simply had to sense you, just so I could prove to myself that you were nearby and safe. Imagine my surprise when it turned out you weren’t nearby at all. In fact you weren’t on Earth. I thought for sure that demons had come back to take you away.”

“No demons came here, angel. I promise. I didn’t mean to scare you—”

“Where did you go then?”

“That isn’t impor—”

“Tell me this instant!”

“Angel, lower your voice—”

“Anthony J. Crowley you will answer me!” he shouts, and the lightbulbs in all of the lamps blow in that moment, casting them in disconsolate dimness that only autumn afternoons can offer. The shattering of glass makes the angel jump like he’s expecting impact, and he spins around the room, shocked at his own show of power. “S-sorry. Terribly rude of me.” He snaps and all of the bulbs are restored, a warm glow returning to the room.

“Aziraphale. Have a seat. I’ll get us some brandy, okay? And I’ll tell you everything.”

“Yes,” he nods, crossing his arms over his chest, realizing he has his great coat on, taking it off and hanging it up by the front door. “Very well then. Um…you’re not hurt, are you?”

“Not at all,” he answers, grabbing two crystal glasses from near the writing desk, and striding across the room to where the angel always keeps a few good bottles stored behind a dusty display of some early copy of the Canterbury Tales. “I’m perfectly fine—oi! I said to keep breathing, remember, stop forgetting to do it: bring the air into your gut, not your chest, idiot. There you go. As I was saying, I’m fine. It’s true I didn’t go back to my flat.”

Aziraphale sits in one of his preferred chairs, back column-straight, fists clenching and unclenching atop his knees. “Did you go to Hell,” he grits out, “or Heaven?”

“Hell,” Crowley admits now that he’s been trapped, pouring a generous glug of brandy into one of the crystals, and trying to look casual as he hands it to the angel, who suddenly is right in front of him, eyes lighting up once again, winding up for another bout of panic.

“You went to Hell? Do you remember what they tried to do to you?!”

“I mean, I wasn’t there, thanks to you,” he answers dryly, sipping his own drink as Aziraphale ignores the one being offered to him. “But you told me. Knew they’d be afraid of me, and they were. Nothing to fear, angel.”

“Afraid of you? They tried to destroy you.”

“But you scared them, remember? I promise, I was safe. Not like Hell just keeps stores of holy water around to punish demons. Usually punishment is much less severe than that. Boiling pits of tar, whips crafted from acid and lava, that sort of schtick. Grade-school shenanigans, really. But they didn’t even try to lay a finger on me, that’s thanks to you, angel. You scared them good and proper when you went down there for me. They consider me immune.”

“Why were you there?”

“I wanted to see if anyone knew where Ziminiar’s escaped off to, alright? If anyone knew about his motives. I wanted to speak to Lord Beelzebub.”

Aziraphale’s crystal glass shatters on the hardwood floor when he jerks up, grabbing Crowley by the lapels of his blazer and slamming him into the back of his armchair so violently that his own brandy splashes across his lap. “You imbecile! They could have killed you!” He’s shouting, eyes glowing and electricity begins to crackle around him.

“What’s gotten into you?” Crowley asks, trying not to be afraid. It’s not that easy when he’s being pinned down by an angel who’s already killed a few other demons as effortlessly as one ties one’s shoes. “You’ve been to Hell, angel. You made Archangel Michael bring you a towel, remember? It was all a joke to you back then. We laughed. You weren’t the least bit afraid.”

“I put on a brave front for you,” he answers tightly. “I wasn’t afraid for my well-being. It was seeing how eager they were to destroy you. Hastur, Dagon, all of them…they looked so happy at the prospect of watching you melt to death in that tub…” he pulls away and starts pacing the room, foot kicking a piece of broken glass. He glances at it dazedly, then snaps at it and all of the glass disappears. “If I’m being perfectly honest with you, my dear, I was dumbfounded by the cruelty with which they handled you.”

Crowley thinks of his time in Heaven, of Gabriel’s polite dismissal. And then he remembers his defensiveness when the Archangel invaded their space just recently, how overdramatic Aziraphale had seemed to find his hostility. Something clicks, and he understands. And so he backs down quickly. “I’m sorry,” he says, reaching into his pocket, sliding his sunglasses back on. Deep breath. He is composed. He can do this. He’s never apologized so much in his long life. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The apology catches the angel off-guard, and he pauses his pacing, staring out the window for a beat, then curling in on himself, arms crossed over his chest tight, like he’s trying to protect himself from his very home. When he doesn’t speak, the demon continues:

“I won’t go back, Aziraphale. I promise. I was just…getting desperate. You know I’m having a hard time, not having a solution to save you. I got desperate, acted impulsive. Was dumb. Real hypocrite for the times I called you stupid, me. I won’t leave Earth though, not if you don’t want me to.”

When the angel turns to him, his eyes glisten. “You don’t understand, do you?” he asks.

“Angel?”

“How much you mean to me, how horrible it would be to lose—oh—” his knees give just a bit and he crumples further in on himself, looking like he might implode out of existence altogether. Crowley makes to rise from his chair, but Aziraphale holds up a hand, motions him to stay away as he exhales shakily, stands tall, gulps back his anxiety as though it’s something one can smother, flame flickering on a candle wick. Crowley suspects it’s more like an inferno. “You can’t do these impulsive things, Crowley. You can’t act as though your life is simply something you can throw away like it means nothing! Should anything happen to you, the earth would lose its mightiest protector, the very first one to speak out against the senseless cruelty of the Great Plan. I…I don’t know how long I could live in a world where you don’t exist anymore.”

“Hey,” he speaks up, voice tremulous. “Aziraphale. Stop making me out to be so special. You were the one to question the Great Plan at that airbase, not me. Earth is still extant because of your bravery.”

“Bravery I would never have found were it not for you,” he tuts, wiping his eyes. “You knew from the moment the Antichrist was placed in your arms that you had to stop Armageddon. And you did it, you terribly clever, brave, heroic serpent, you.”

The words elicit a full-body shudder. “I’m no hero.”

“You _are_ , Crowley.”

“Angel—”

“You yourself told me that you suspect it’s not all over yet, that there’s more to come. Heaven and Hell against Earth. Well, I need you around to help me in case that day ever comes. Can’t stop them all by myself, can I?” They look at each other miserably for a moment, the weight of the threat unbearably heavy. “Oh, I know, dear boy. I don’t want to be a soldier either. I never did. Never asked to be.”

“Handed your sword away as soon as you could, didn’t you?” _And in doing so, you precipitated the biggest fall of my existence. I don’t think I’ll ever stop falling when I’m around you._ He wants terribly to tell him. Maybe now’s the time. 

“But I don’t just need you to be a soldier here,” Aziraphale stirs him from his thoughts. “I need your friendship, Crowley. If this is how I have to live the rest of my life, in pain like this, bleeding and washing a wound that never heals and learning to adjust with this new experience, I do hope I can continue to look forward to time spent with you. Going to concerts or the opera. Lunches at the Ritz, wine and Schubert on my gramophone as we share a bottle of…of Chateau Margaux. Oh, you don’t love that label though. Anything, really.”

“All of that, whenever you want it, angel, always,” he insists, stumbling over the words as he tries to get them all out, he feels like they’re racing against time, like the course of their conversation will shift again before he can get all of his reassurances out, prove to Aziraphale just how desperate he is to taste that happiness once again. “You’re the one who hasn’t been eating or indulging yourself in anything nice. I miss that too, you know. Miss the way you smile when the waiter brings you dessert, or the way you close your eyes during the last overture in a concert. How you keep humming the fugues to yourself during the drive home afterwards. That time we heard the Mussorgsky, you kept humming the Promenade so much I was ready to scream, angel. Really I was. It kept getting stuck in my head for days afterwards. I nearly called you the next day just to give you a piece of my mind.”

“Oh I wish you had,” Aziraphale sobs.

This time he doesn’t stop the demon as he rises from the armchair, sets his half-spilled glass of brandy down, envelops Aziraphale in his mile-long arms and buries his face in his neck. Aziraphale doesn’t hug back, just stands there with his arms folded between their chests, pressing forward into Crowley and shuddering with the effort of restraining his emotions.

“I’ve got you,” he promises, improbably gentle. It’s weird that his voice can sound like this, weird what he’s capable of being for the angel. It’s strange how he can become the person he wants to be, just for a moment. “Stop trying to fight it, you clever idiot. Just let it out already.”

“No,” he sighs. “I’d best not. I’m fine, really. Just, just give me a moment.”

“You’re not.”

“Oh, but I will be, my dear.”

“Aziraphale, listen to me. If we’re going to continue on like this, I think I need you to understand something.”

He draws back, presses his forehead to Aziraphale’s, closing his eyes. They hover there, sharing breath, feeling very small in the large, alcohol-smelling room. Aziraphale’s hands tremble against the lapels of his blazer, his fingertips dancing along the soft silver material of Crowley’s thin scarf. 

“Listen to me. You need to stop pressuring yourself to be okay when you’re not. I’m…for Heaven’s sake, if I’m still here in this bookshop, don’t you think it might mean something?”

“You’re loyal to a fault,” he whispers. At least he’s no longer screaming.

“I’m loyal to you because you’re my best friend, Aziraphale. Haven’t you figured that out by now? Six thousand bloody years here on Earth, and you’ve made it worth being here. I’d have found the humans worth spending time with, gotten into some trouble, tasted alcohol and bought a Bentley. Sure, I’d have done all of that without you. But I was willing to stand at that airbase and fight till my last breath for this planet because you taught me to look in the crevices. You gave all you had on you to the first two humans, even after they’d disobeyed the Almighty. You sought me out and bought me oysters; you carried me over the Alps when Hannibal’s army was approaching and I’d been wounded, you tried to stop the spread of the Black Death and I know it was you who convinced Cardinal Giustiniani to leave Leonardo alone when they were coming for him in 1590.”

“You have no proof of that,” he interrupted. “I was working alongside Michelangelo and I told you Leonardo was of no interest to me.”

“You did I know you bloody _did_ , angel. Because you knew we were friends and I was having a good time and you knew humanity couldn’t afford to lose his ideas just yet.”

“He may have been the better painter,” he conceded. “But _David_ remains a superior sculpture to anything he ever attempted.”

“Apples and oranges, angel.”

“Oranges, dear; it was the Midici family funding him, and oranges were their symbol.”

“You keep distracting me,” he complains, but he’s smiling. He’s not used to being allowed to hover this close and it doesn’t feel strange at all. He likes being able to smell Aziraphale’s soap on his skin, feel the warmth radiating from his jugular, right there, so close, blood pulsing with oxygen nestled safely atop molecules of hemoglobin. “My point. My point is—”

“If you say dolphins—”

“Shh, angel!” Playfully, he presses a finger to Aziraphale’s lips to silence him. The angel looks up at him, head just slightly inclined, eyes twinkling, somehow managing to capture every source of light in the room and refracting it back brilliantly. His plush, pink mouth is curved in a coy smile; he wants to keep talking, interrupting, but he’s caught a little off guard by the hand on his mouth. For just a moment his eyes flicker down to Crowley’s hand. But he doesn’t move, doesn’t tip his head back, away from the touch, doesn’t push Crowley away with the hands resting on his chest. He just stands there, wide eyes illuminated and lips not curving down from their smile, and oh fuck, this is it, the very trust and goodness that Crowley was just trying to explain to him. Here it is. Suddenly having trouble remembering how to breathe, the demon trips up, loses his place, finds it again because he’s not being met with the distance he was half-expecting to be forced between them. 

Very slowly and deliberately, he lowers his hand, looking directly at the angel’s lips. “Stay put,” he orders them softly, and Aziraphale exhales through his nose; the tiniest snort of amusement. He hasn’t inhaled breath in a while himself; perhaps he too forgot to breathe for a moment. “As I was saying,” his eyes flick from the angel’s mouth to his eyes. “My point is: you are the sort of angel who stops in the middle of the sidewalk to stare a birds and who pauses mid-sentence because you’re admiring the way sunlight is falling on a patch of flowers. You’re such a hedonist that you never miss the opportunity to enjoy what this planet has to offer: you’ll wring every last bloody drop of joy from it, and you’ll love every atom for being present to offer you such happiness.”

He pauses to let those words sink in, watches them process in Aziraphale’s mind in the way his smile fades into something a little more awestruck. Still, he doesn’t dare interrupt, so Crowley continues. “You know what? It’s taught me to enjoy things too. Things no other angel or demon ever told me I could enjoy. So I’m not going to leave your side, Aziraphale. I thought it’s what you wanted. When you shut down, look, bearing my bloody soul here, alright? I assumed it was because you blamed me for getting hurt, or that you wanted to be left alone to recover. But if you truly want me here, then I won’t leave you. Not now, not ever. I walked into Heaven to keep you safe, of course I’ll stay in this bookshop, for the rest of our days if it’s what you really want.”

There’s so much more he wants to say, so much he hasn’t gotten to yet, and he’s already cocked this confession up so horribly as it is, bringing up that stupid time in the Alps during the Second Punic War, why did he mention that? And the fucking oysters? Really? But before he can continue, before he can add that his heart is Aziraphale’s for the taking, that he, a demon, has finally had the chance to love, Aziraphale is lifting one hand and mirroring Crowley’s previous gesture, two fingers softly pressing to his lips to silence him.

“You oughtn’t say such recklessly kind things about me,” he whispers, tears filling his eyes and gathering in the corners, not quite ready to fall. “I don’t deserve this goodness, least of all from you, Crowley, you’re too good, too good to me and to this world, despite everything you’ve endured. Oh, my dear, how do you manage to get on in this world with a heart so big and kind?”

“’m not,” he insists against the angel’s fingers, and Aziraphale laughs and shushes him.

“You are, you’re so good, Crowley,” he assures, his hand sliding up to cup Crowley’s cheek. And in that moment, he feels more blessed than he ever felt up in Heaven, orchestrating galaxies for the Almighty. He feels like he could stand here forever, face held by this soft, smiling Principality, and he would never want for anything ever again. He could forgo wine and music and fast cars and meteor showers for the pleasure of seeing how tenderly Aziraphale smiles at him and pours benedictions off his tongue. “You’re the very best thing this world has and I simply won’t hear of you saying anything to the contrary. Because don’t you know that for every good thing I’ve done on this planet because I thought it was my duty to do so, you’ve done good simply because that’s who you are? Sneaking children onto the Ark, or the time you brought the snakes in to tame the rodent population to prevent another flare-up of plague in Tripoli. While I did good, it was in my interest. When you did good, you were risking your skin for your beliefs. I’m certain a braver being has never stood on this green Earth. So please, just promise me one thing: when you say that you want to stay here, that you value my friendship and for some reason or other you enjoy spending all this time here with me, promise that you’re being sincere, and that you understand that should you ever want to leave, you may. I can’t bear the thought of you sticking around, stalwart as anything, simply because you feel sorry for me.”

“Hng, nope. All wrong, that,” he says with a wince, and he inclines his head, kisses the palm that’s been pressed to his cheek, feels the warm soft flesh there and feels Aziraphale start at the sensation. He kisses his hand again. “I’m staying.” Kiss. “We’re in this together now.” Kiss. “Couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.” Kiss. “I’m terrible like that, you know.” He looks at Aziraphale, knows that Aziraphale can see through his dark lenses somewhat because the angel’s pupils are locked on his own. “Wily thing like me, now I’ve got you right where I want you, see?”

“Ah,” he breathes. “Wily indeed. Dastardly thing. I suppose I’m stuck with you now.” But he is blushing and he is smiling, and even though it’s cold and miserable outside, Crowley suddenly feels the urge to pull Aziraphale out into the streets, to dance with him, to skip all the way to the Bentley and to drive down the streets announcing his elation.

_Look here! This angel wants me here and he just smiled at me like you wouldn’t believe. Look at this, our mutual joy at being allowed to be here together!_

He releases the angel’s hand, and they both find themselves turning towards the old gramophone, watching them innocuously from the corner of the room. Despite the close quarters they’ve been keeping, it has never once occurred to either of them to put on any music, and with memories rife in both their brains, it feels like a perfect backdrop to set up for an early evening of stories.

“When was the last time you pulled out any Schubert for me, angel?” he asks.

Aziraphale’s eyes twinkle with a light he hasn’t seen in what feels like centuries. “If you can improve our liquor situation, I’m sure I can arrange for us something truly exceptional to listen to. Though you mustn’t blame me if I wind up humming any fugues later on.”

“Blame you? Pah, wouldn’t dream of it, angel. Wouldn’t dream of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your time! Feedback is always greatly appreciated!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ziminiar makes his presence known. He's none too pleased with Crowley. And Aziraphale is none too pleased with himself. Now's the time for action, not self-refection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it has been a while. I'm sorry for the time it's taken to post this chapter; I do hope it was worth the wait. We're hitting the climax here!

Something shifts from that afternoon onwards. Crowley keeps missing opportunities to pick up where their conversation drifted off. He’d been on the brink of something, something he’s quite certain he can’t hide from Aziraphale anymore, and more importantly: something he doesn’t want to.

He’d literally held his hand and kissed it, looked into his eyes and essentially sworn fealty to him. And still the angel flits about him, unaware that he is the center of Crowley’s universe. He at least understands the nature of their friendship a bit more. In his rush of anxiety, he’d shown his hand, shown how inconsolably desperate he is to keep Crowley safe—he thinks again of Aziraphale’s rage as he’d brought his sword down on Marchosias—it’s true, he really does value Crowley, and accepting that loyalty, acknowledging it there for what it is instead of trying to justify ways around it is delightful. He should have known after they successfully avoided Armageddon. Yet at the height of danger and panic back in the summer, it had been so easy to justify Aziraphale’s allegiance to him as allegiance to Earth itself. He sees now that he had miscalculated. From the moment Aziraphale, a discorporated ghost of a being, had found him in that pub and told him to get to Tadfield, he had made up his mind to stick with Crowley.

Now, that’s all perfectly clear.

And so they listen to Schubert and drink scotch and good wine that evening.

The following evening, same routine. Something shifts. It’s not ideal: Aziraphale still needs help cleaning his wounded back, which continues to remain unchanged, but they’re able to find reasons to laugh again, to reminisce about the best fruits they’ve tasted on each continent, and to giggle over some of the best and worst fashion trends humans have ever pursued. As conversation resumes more fluidly between them, Aziraphale’s natural chattiness recovers: he begins instigating more of these strolls down Memory Lane.

“Do you recall the first time I found you feeding ducks at St. James Park?” he asks one morning over tea, eyes mischievous. “You had previously told me that you hated them, found water foul repulsive and noisy. I should have known better.” And later that same day, “what was the first plant I ever gifted to you, dear boy?”

“Hyssop,” he answers immediately. “You loved the soft purple petals. Seem to recall making a joke about them looking rather phallic, which you didn’t find too funny at the time. I didn’t hear from you again for over five hundred years.”

“Yes, I recall. I wasn’t ignoring you: I got a little caught up with helping the Israelites around that time. I’m sure I meant to visit you again sooner and simply didn’t have the time.”

“Relax, angel. I take no offense. Lovely smell, they had. I remember watching purple flowers emerge every spring, and the color made me think of you. I’d wonder if you’d come pay me another visit.”

“Eventually I did.”

Indeed, eventually he always did.

One day about a week into their renewed security, Crowley starts taking Aziraphale out on drives into the countryside, and they do their best to ignore the sound of Freddy Mercury and take in the sights of winter settling in early, chasing autumn off of the trees and out of the sky.

While they’re not quite ready for one of their preferred restaurants yet, Aziraphale consents one afternoon to stopping at a bakery, sitting in the crowded place and ordering a scone—orange blossom with Tahitian vanilla bean glaze. He only pecks, really, but it’s more enthusiasm than he’s shown for food in what feels like months, so Crowley takes it.

Their teatime is cut short when a group of teenagers try to squeeze in behind the angel to sit at a nearby table. The bakery is so small and cramped that one of the teens accidentally knocks her purse against the angel’s back as she scoots into a chair behind him. Aziraphale, in the process of dabbing his mouth with a napkin, goes statue-still, pain and terror splintering across his face.

Humans call it post-traumatic stress, this emotion that suddenly pours forth as though Aziraphale is reliving his mutilation again and again and again. It’s a nice diagnosis: simple, compact words that summarize a dilation of the pupils, a skipped heartbeat, the thin sheen of sweat that breaks out across the brow. Clinical though, human language fails to capture the emotional upheaval, the way the light conversation is abandoned as defenses kick in, echoes of terror reverberating through the nervous system, storm clouds gathering, deluge of anxiety and clenched fists, rapid blinking, _can you hear me? where have you gone? don’t you understand the threat has passed?_

Crowley instantly finds himself leaning over the table to take his free hand, which sits on the table near his tea cup. “You’re safe, angel. Let’s pop back to mine, shall we? Hey, hey, eyes on me, alright? Can you see me?”

Mute with the anxiety that the single touch ignited, he can only nod and clutch at the demon’s hand as Crowley practically drags him out of the shop, leaving a handful of crumpled notes for the staff. They’ll be thrilled by the generous tip. He’ll just be thrilled if there’s no blood on the back of the angel’s coat (thank Somebody; there is not).

They make their way to Crowley’s home, check in on his miraculously un-withered plants. It’s almost like somebody has kept them in their prayers, given that no one has watered them in well over two weeks and yet they all remain verdant and healthy. Crowley gives Aziraphale a suspicious look, but the angel, finally regaining his composure, only smiles placidly at a rhododendron and offers no commentary. Crowley sighs and settles Aziraphale in his throne, satisfied that the angel’s back is not bleeding, that his wound, a bizarre rip in space and time that both exists on his corporation and does not, has not been reopened by the shove from the girl’s handbag.

“Should’ve picked a better café; something more spacious,” Crowley mutters, pouring them both a glass of wine—it’s the middle of the afternoon, but hang social convention, they’ve earned it—and watching Aziraphale’s hand as it closes around the stem of the wine glass intently. No tremors. Good. “Rent’s so high these days; all good restaurants are becoming little holes in the wall. Used to be you could sit down, have room to stretch your legs. Shame, what politicians are doing to London.”

“It’s fine, Crowley. The café was perfectly acceptable. I just need to, well, to toughen up. What is that American expression?”

“’Played for suckers’? Not really applicable here, that.”

“No, silly! Um, ‘pick myself up by my bootstraps.’ That’s it. What I need to do,” he swirls the glass below his nose, inhaling the smell and letting it breathe a bit, eyes thoughtful. “I certainly want to be able to go out to nice places with you after all. And we won’t be able to do that if I can’t hold myself together without incident.”

“Look, you did just fine during the car ride. It wasn’t your fault. And anyway,” he gestures a bit violently, nearly spilling his own drink, “you’re not even wearing boots! That expression’s’not a good one to use either.”

“ _Crowley_ ,”

“Angel?”

“Stop sheltering me.”

He snorts. “’m not.”

“You are,” he insists. “While I appreciate the efforts you’re taking to protect me both physically and…well, emotionally, it isn’t necessary. I simply need to start being better.”

“Why? You’ve endured a damn trauma, why should it be on you to get over it when the world has abused you so terribly?”

“Crowley, life is oftentimes cruel! I was there at Sodom, I stood at the bow of the Ark! I saw what the Almighty allowed to happen to Job, watched Abraham tilt Isaac’s head back,” he sets his wine glass down like he’s too nauseous to drink. “I understand that suffering is a part of existence. What I do not understand is why must you suddenly shelter me?”

“Because that was your world, angel. It’s not our new world. Not the one here on our side,” he’s pacing once again, and he resents himself for looking so agitated in front of Aziraphale but he can’t help it, can’t hold still. “Now that it’s us versus all of them, you can bet your halo I’ll be doing everything in my power to make sure things’re done differently. This planet is small, angel; there’s no room for unnecessary cruelty, not anymore!”

For a brief moment, he’s afraid Aziraphale is about to cry. Something flickers through his eyes that’s hard to read, but it’s a powerful emotion that he physically tampers down with clenched fists. “That there,” he says tightly. “I still cannot grasp it, please, dear, _elucidate me_. How can you be so good to me after what She did to you? How? Life has been brutal for you, Crowley. You’ve been cast out of Her light…and now you’re all about forgiveness and kindness? Your loyalty to me, our mutual decision to say _hang the consequences_ and protect one another, I can comprehend. But your capacity to push for such a gentle world order in the wake of the life you’ve been forced to walk?”

“Guess I deserved it,” he answers stiffly, speaking to his shoes rather than to his friend. Leave it to Aziraphale to rope God into their discussion. Typical angel, unable to parse out their own interactions without using Her as some sort of middle ground. “You certainly didn’t. I asked questions; you protected Her own. Different circumstances.”

“If our world is one in which you deserve the cruelty life has wrought upon you for centuries while I get a free pass simply for being an angel, then I’m not interested in it. I simply refuse to accept such logic.”

“For once in your long life, do you think you could try not being a total contrarian for all of five minutes, Aziraphale? For Heaven’s sake.”

“Don’t you call me a contrarian! You’re the one who perpetually seeks to dig deeper, to demand ‘why?’ and yet you’re answering me with the same canned response I would have received from Upstairs. I know you can’t really be satisfied with that explanation—”

“I’m not, alright?” Crowley snaps, sips his drink. “I never said that I thought it was fair, or that I think any of it makes sense. You want to know the truth, Aziraphale? I’ve tried reaching out to Her, I’ve tried asking why I was so bad and you were so lucky, and I never heard back. I’m not thrilled with it, but…”

“But?”

“I can’t bring myself to regret it. I’m not ashamed of what I am, and I also wouldn’t want you to experience what I’ve seen, y’know? It’s…” he gestures helplessly. “A weird sort of…”

“Contradiction?” Aziraphale supplies a little smugly.

“Fine, so we’re both contrarians, aren’t we?”

“And you’re a hypocrite.”

“Anyway, stands to reason that there is no reason. We’re both made up of a lot of good and a lot of bad qualities, and frankly, I don’t know what makes me so much slimier and lower than everyone else, but She decided it was so. Am I bitter? Eh, sure, sometimes I am, okay? But since you and I are both here now, mixed up with these humans who also contain good parts and bad parts—”

“We contain multitudes—”

“Okay, Whitman, have another drink and let me get my words out. Chatty!” Aziraphale smiles at him thoughtfully. “I’ve learned to ease up on that grudge against God a little bit, alright? I don’t like, it, I don’t understand it. I think the governing logic of our world is basically that reason and punishment are arbitrary, and deviation from expectation results in scrutiny. It’s a horrible mess, to live at the mercy of a Divinity that mercurial, but I don’t fucking care these days. Because here on this planet, we have our own rules, and I’m happy to watch you hover above me, and I’m content with it being just us two, and all these colorful, creative idiot humans and the animals and the plants and all of that. Joshua trees, sunrises, apple orchards in the autumn. Those things. I’m happy with it, even if it feels like fate is little more than a game of Russian Roulette with a barrel loaded with Hellfire.”

“Touching sentiment, my dear, though I might suggest one edit.”

“Edit—what do you mean, edit? Those are my thoughts! You can’t come in here and line-edit you fastidious, controlling bastard!”

“The bit about me hovering above you, nix it.”

“What?”

“Nix it,” he repeats. “I walk on the ground, same as you.” When Crowley simply looks at him in wide-eyed amazement, he continues. “What I mean is, I’m still an angel by Heaven’s standards, sure, and presumably by the Almighty’s as well. Yet as you have said, we operate differently here on this earth. And I elect to stand on equal ground with you here. So don’t sanctify me, we’re exactly the same!”

“Oh come on Aziraphale, you’re so histrionic, just take the high praise and drink your drink.”

“We stand on equal ground, or not at all,” he answers, standing, looking prepared to give an impassioned speech.

Just to be a contrarian too, Crowley drops back into his chair, smirking easily when Aziraphale rolls his eyes and grumbles an exasperated _really, Crowley_ under his breath, although he smiles just a bit.

“There’s that smile,” he says, pointing as though he’s just spotted the Holy Grail sitting out in plain sight. “Success!”

“While we’re settling into this new world of ours, this one in which you shelter me and I perpetually try to convince you to stop being so indulgent,” Aziraphale blushes and smooths the lapels of his coat, “perhaps there’s something I should tell you, something I’ve been rather reticent about, but, well, perhaps it’s time I bear everything to you in this new world of ours.”

His movements speak volumes to how nervous he is, and Crowley wonders if he’s about to learn something painful, if Aziraphale is about to reveal something about what happened in his time in Hell, or confess that he’s been keeping in touch with Heaven this whole time after all. But no: he dares a quick moment of eye contact, and his compassion is so earnest, so sincere. He has not been lying to Crowley since Armageddon: all this camaraderie and tenderness has been real. He steels himself with a deep breath. “Floor’s yours then, angel.”

“Crowley, do you remember when you dropped a bomb on us during the Great War?”

“The second Great War, you mean?” Of course he does. He can remember the very mousse that Aziraphale used in his hair back then, how it caught and defined each delicate curl on his head, so he looked so fucking perfect that he didn’t seem real, he can remember how he had thought _this, this is what Penelope must have felt as she wove and un-wove her shroud waiting for Odysseus each day, this act of getting so close to perfection and not quite being able to attain it_ : it was how it felt to take in his angel, standing at the alter, the sharp lapels of his jacket like wings (perfectly symmetric back then), then his eyes, glowing in firelight as they stood over the corpses of Nazis, their souls already hurtling towards Hell’s gates as Crowley slipped a heavy bag of books into Aziraphale’s outstretched hand.

_Take this, take all that I have to give and I will never tire of finding new things to give you so long as you keep me in your life._

“Yes, yes, the second one. Do you recall? I had become tangled up in a rather convoluted Nazi scheme regarding some of my most prized books of prophecy.”

“It wasn’t the least bit convoluted, angel. A Nazi spy lied to you and you trusted her because you are as naïve as they come. I remember. Where exactly are you going with this?”

“Oh do relax, I’m getting to my point,” he grouses, ever annoyed to be rushed. The demon chuckles and refills his glass, making himself more comfortable and sipping deeply. He doesn’t really want to rush Aziraphale; he likes hearing him tell stories, especially when he’s recounting past shared experiences. His perspective is so often different from Crowley’s. “What I was getting at is that, well, I had been under the impression that you were quite angry with me at the time. So to suddenly see you that night was a relief. An exceptionally big one.”

“Angel, even if we fight, I hope you’d’ve known by the twentieth century that I’d never let you get discorporated if I could help it.”

“Well, I didn’t know. Not up until that night anyway. So as I was saying, it was a relief. And then, not only did save me, but you even used a demonic miracle to protect my books because you knew how much they meant to me.”

“What can I say? You’re easy to please. Glad I could be of service.”

“Crowley, what I’m getting at is that you simply must know that when you held those books out to me, there, amid that fire, amid the wailing of the alarms, on that desecrated ground that had once been a church, and we could smell the dreadful smoke from the fires, remember how prevalent they were back then? Thank goodness that ended…” he looks at Crowley and the air in the room seems to swirl around them, or maybe the room brightens a bit? Crowley dares a surreptitious look towards the window to see if the sun is trying to eek its way out through the clouds (it is not). He can’t quite explain what happens then, when the angel looks at him in that moment, but he becomes aware of the fact that even though his sunglasses, Aziraphale’s eyes are such a lovely shade of blue today, like dawn right before daybreak, just before morning truly begins. His pink lips part to speak, close again, smile, and then he jerks his attention away, eyeing the da Vinci Crowley keeps in the room. “Oh,” he sighs to her. “You are so damn good to me, aren’t you, Crowley?”

Crowley feels drunker than any glass of wine should have made him. He feels absolutely, stupendously drunk. Aziraphale’s praise has that affect on him, though not normally like this. “Not good, angel. That’s a four-letter word. Just doing what I can for you. We look out for one another, always have, right?” He can remember the pressure of Aziraphale’s hand over his in the Alps as they fled Hannibal’s army. How tirelessly Aziraphale had climbed narrow peaks and hidden them amid boulders and moss when the sound of horses drew too close. He can recall the taste of of clean water on his tongue as he lay, waiting to die and return to Hell, after being partly burned at the stake in the late 1500s. Rains had put out the fire and he’d had the strength to summon enough lightening to scare the clergy off, but not before sustaining life-threatening wounds. Aziraphale had found him, nursed him back to health. And all the many, many, many times that existence had felt like too much: the simple promise of the angel’s company was often enough to ground him.

_Can’t go giving up now, can I? I’ve got that bottle of wine the angel will enjoy._ Or a letter—oh, Aziraphale loved to write him long, flowery letters—they would arrive right when he was most despairing, and then he would spend an afternoon reading the angel’s correspondence by the fire, smiling to himself at how easy it was to hear his voice, his very cadence, in his written word. He stirs from his own reveries when he realizes he’s being spoken to.

“—But what if I ruin things and you grow upset with me?” Aziraphale asks, and the hand that is holding his wine glass begins to descend like a setting sun, and the demon has to fight the urge to lunge forward and nudge his arm back up, bring the conversation back to where it was just hovering.

“I could never, idiot! I get cross with you on a daily—hn, no— _hourly_ —basis, sure. Doesn’t change that you’re the only one around worth being a little frivolous with demonic miracles for. Promise.”

“Oh, but I’ve already pushed your patience to its limits since I’ve become so incapacitated,” he frets, and Crowley wants to scream as he sees those walls the angel constructs around himself going back up.

“We’ve had this conversation countless times already, you idiot,” he snaps. “How many times do I have to tell to you that you’re not burdening me? I’m sticking by your side by choice, Aziraphale. Stop it already.”

“I apologize,” he says quickly. “Didn’t mean to slip into that self-depreciating melancholia again. Please, dear, please accept my apology.”

He rolls his eyes—his whole head, really—for the drama of it. “By some demonic miracle, yes, I have forgiven you. Now can we get on with your story?”

“My story?”

“About the Second World War and the church and all that? You were the one insisting the story had a point.”

“Ah!” he frowns. “Yes. I was just going to say…well…”

“C’mon, angel. Out with it.”

“That was the first time I ever rode in your Bentley.”

He’s lying. This wasn’t his point. “I know that.”

“Even then, the first time I rode in it, I was scared, Crowley. You drove through those crater-pocked streets like a maniac. Yet…” he folds his hands in his lap, wine abandoned on the coffee table. “Even though I was afraid, I knew you’d get me back to my bookshop safely. I trusted you. I think sometimes that was the first night that I really trusted you beyond any shadow of doubt; I knew that you’d take care of me. You’d already proven to me that even after we had a rather serious fight, you were still so very ki…nn…so very _valiant_.”

He grits his teeth at the anticlimax. As vindicating as Aziraphale’s praise is, he knows the angel well enough to know when he’s making things up as he goes along, bumbling his way though a bought of silence. Whatever Aziraphale intended to tell him, he’s changed his mind, and will not reveal it tonight. If he ever does.

“Valiant, eh?”

“Why, yes. I thought so anyway.”

“Not a four-letter word, that.”

“No. Better.”

It would be so easy to start a fight, to lambast the angel for not being straight with him yet again. For lying so obviously to his face. Instead, Crowley raises his wineglass. He’s had enough fighting lately. Better soak up whatever affectionate words he can get instead.

“Ta for that. To the Bentley, which got you home safely that night.”

“And so many nights since,” Aziraphale rushes to collect and raise his own glass, eyes crinkling with a smile at Crowley’s patience. “To the Bentley.”

They clink glasses.

And they each take a sip.

Crowley spits his drink onto the floor as his mouth fills with the flavors of mold and rot and terror.

“Crowley?” the angel snaps up in alarm, watching the demon retch at the taste, wipe his mouth, and look around.

“He’s here.”

“Who?”

“You,” a voice calls from the other end of the room. 

The floor itself turns to putrid liquid, and out of that liquid a figure rises. It’s the smell of an animal carcass decaying in the woods on a humid day, of altars after the Athenians slaughtered their sheep and their bulls for Apollo and marched into war. It’s sulfuric, like the whiff Crowley got back in Pompeii when it hit him, really hit him, _we need to get out of here now or we’re not getting out at all,_ and had rushed through the city to find Aziraphale, still there dressed like a civilian and trying to urge families to drop their belongings and flee already. _It’s too late, angel. Take my hand because we’ve only got a few seconds. Come with me or get sent back to Heaven and who knows if you’ll ever get back here again?_ Of course, despite the agony etched on his face, he’d taken Crowley’s hand, stumbled into him as time stopped around them, enough time for Crowley to spread his wings and push off. _I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you._

“I’ve got you,” Ziminiar says, smile manic as he appears right there in Crowley’s flat. 

Because he’d spent so much time fortifying the bookshop, and he’d never even thought about his own home, had never anticipated that they might both come back here together, that Ziminiar would return so soon.

“You’ll find that now is a good time to leave,” Aziraphale speaks, on his feet in an instant, stance defensive and hands clenching into fists. “You are not welcome here.”

“Hush, Principality, it’s not you I’m interested in,” he replies; his eyes have not left Crowley since he rose up from the puddle of stench on the floor. His wings appear around him, the tips smoking where they brush Crowley’s doorframe, his carpet, the molding in his hallway. And then flames are sparking there, destructive fire spreading everywhere he makes contact with Crowley’s home. “You really went and ratted on me, didn’t you, you snake?”

Crowley rises too, taking a step forward cautiously, aware that Ziminiar might lash out at any moment, remembering that he can move so quickly that even Crowley’s sensitive eyes struggle to keep up.

“You went and told Lord Beelzebub,” he hisses, his fangs growing longer and longer. In his rage, he’s not even trying to keep himself human-looking. His eyes are practically glowing, electric mold, toxic, _hazardous_. This color occurs in nature only to proclaim its own deadliness. “Can you imagine my surprise when I popped back to Hell to start gathering a new army and was promptly summoned? Oh, they were furious that I’d come onto Earth and accosted a demon who’d learned to resist holy water, and one that was close with a renegade angel no less! I tried to explain that I’d had things under control, but they even had proof of my excursion: one of that imbecile Asag’s fucking _teeth_.”

“Lord Beelzebub punished you for putting Hell in such danger by acting impulsively,” Aziraphale concludes. “Seems rather just. A war was recently avoided, you know. Countless deaths were prevented. Had Crowley and I asked for Heaven’s help, your lot might have been snuffed out completely. What was it then, pit of boiling sulfur? Those little goatlike men with flaming pitchforks?”

“Don’t speak to me of the torments of Hell, Principality,” Ziminiar snaps, acidic eyes flicking towards the angel momentarily. “You know _nothing_ of bodily suffering. Your stuffed corporation speaks to that.”

Aziraphale only tuts at the slight and tries to catch Crowley’s eye. Crowley can feel his gaze, waiting for some sort of instruction, but keeps his eyes on Ziminiar. Everything he’s tried has failed. If he’s going to save Aziraphale, the only chance he has is standing right in front of him, murder swirling in every fleck of sweat on his scaly face. 

“You clearly escaped whatever punishment they assigned to you,” Crowley says. “It’s hardly been a millennia or two.”

“Time moves quite differently in Hell,” Ziminiar replies. “But yes, I did escape. Because there was one thing more important to me than avoiding the lifetime of torment Hell had established just for me.”

“And what was that?” he knows the answer. Grins tightly as Ziminiar’s pupils shrink into pinpricks and his smile turns molten.

“Making you pay, Crowley. Of course.”  


Then his claws are in Crowley’s chest, and the floor is shattering beneath him as Ziminiar pins him down, roaring with the volume of Jupiter-sized lion. Before he can sink dagger-long teeth into Crowley’s throat though, Aziraphale has kicked Ziminiar hard enough to send him careening across the room.

He kneels beside Crowley and looks over at Ziminiar, expression hard as marble. He snaps his fingers once, and the fires that have broken out around them all go out in a single whoosh.

“Come join us somewhere more secluded to sort this out,” he says, “won’t you?”

Then he’s miracling them somewhere far away, binding Crowley’s torn flesh together again with a deft swirl of his wrist as they go. Cream seeping into coffee: that’s how painless and fluid it feels as his skin reforms over his bones.

“Crowley, my dear, I must ask you something,” Aziraphale’s voice rings out. Crowley can’t see where they’re going: his vision is obstructed by the glistening white of Aziraphale’s good wing.

“Anything, angel,” he says, his own wings unfurling, his arms and cheeks itching slightly as his scales threaten to break through. Ziminiar will not hurt Aziraphale again. He will die here today. Crowley will make sure of it.

“Do you remember the Villa di Castello, where we spent so much time, back in Florence?”

The demon’s brow furrows at the obscurity of the question. Naturally, he knows what Aziraphale is referring to. Florence, 1530s it must have been, 1534 or so. The Grand Duke of Tuscany had been so generous, so hospitable, to both Crowley and Aziraphale, having no idea that they had been sent to him with opposing agendas, neither of which was really carried out in the end. Instead, they had spent their days getting deliriously drunk with artists, writers, intellectuals, and the odd engineer who meandered into the Medici’s fine garden. Nevermind that the alcohol was being supplied with money laundered by criminals: at least they were funding the best minds to come out of Italy at the time, the ends justifying the means, as far as Aziraphale was concerned.

“Of course I remember,” he answers.

“Good. And do you remember where Leonardo sketched our profiles that fine summer evening? Right by the small garden with all the red poppies? Do you remember where we sat, opposite one another so Leonardo could get both of our profiles at once, and you sat facing east, and I sat facing west—”

“Yes,” he cuts him off. “I remember!” _The setting sun illuminated your face so beatifically. Your eyes looked alight with the orange glow. I wished he could have captured you as I saw you, so perfect._ “Why, angel, why does any of that mater?”

And in that moment, they land where Aziraphale has intended for them to land, in the middle of a craggy field with rocky cliffs visible in the distance and the smell of the ocean nearby. The wind whips and it’s cruel, and Crowley realizes that for some reason, they’re in Scotland, of course he recognizes the smell and the wind and the way the light strikes the land. Way, way north in Scotland. Their feet touch the ground, their wings catch a breeze, they steady themselves, and suddenly Ziminiar is nearby too, Crowley can smell him.

“Because I have blessed the land here,” he answers, snapping his fingers and suddenly a bolt of lightening crackles, charring the dead grass inches from where they stand. “Exactly here, in this spot,” he indicates to the burned earth, “is where I sat and stared into the west. And so you stood right,” he nudges Crowley to the side a bit, “right there. Now I need you to imagine the intricate pathways at the garden, Crowley. The walkways where we spent so many afternoons and evenings winding along the trees and the fountains and the flowers. I need you to understand that if you step off the pathway, it will smart. Okay?”

“You… _Aziraphale_. You fucking _genius_.”

All those hours that the angel had spent, slinking off with no explanations offered, Crowley realizes, were not spent try to escape his presence. They were spent planning for the inevitable. Aziraphale has painstakingly sanctified the ground around them in a unique pattern that only he and Crowley can navigate, recreating the pathways through the Villa di Castello’s gardens and blessing the land all around it so no demon can walk. None of the excessive planning would have been necessary had he not planned on fighting alongside Crowley; surely it would have been easier to just bless the whole field, lure Ziminiar here, and instantly have a leg up in battle. Aziraphale, elegant and purposeful as always, has gone a step beyond to include Crowley, to make that dedication as intricate and yet unmistakable as the Villa itself.

“Real bastard move, that, isn’t it? Poor fool hardly knows what he’s in for,” he says, unable to restrain his smile. 

“It’s what he gets for threatening Earth and earning my ire,” Aziraphale replies cooly. “This is nothing if not deserved. Besides, I don’t always have to be the nice, angelic one these days now, do I?”

“‘Course not. On our own side.”

“Damn right, we are,” he says, miracling his flaming sword with a flourish.

As proud as he is in the moment, Crowley can’t help but notice what an imperfect picture Aziraphale makes. He’s going into battle already weakened, wounded. Crowley has not only failed to find a way to cure him, but his impulsiveness is what’s brought Ziminiar back so soon.

“Angel, listen to me.” Aziraphale obediently glances at him, eyes taking on that cool, steely shade they do when he’s focused. It’s hard to find words when he’s being looked at like that, but he forces them out in a hyperfast tumble. “I appreciate all that you’ve done. You’ve taken the lead and you’ve protected me. So let me help you now, okay? You’ve planned this all out, you blessed these blades of grass, you clever fucking bastard, knowing we could die here: let me fight for you now.”

“Don’t fight for me, dear boy,” he answers, a tad exasperated, like Crowley is still not getting the grasp of something very simple. “Fight for us.”

And Crowley swears to himself then and there, if it kills him, he’ll end this long-overdue fight to protect his angel, his heart, his home.

“There you are,” Ziminiar snarls, popping out of the ground in a ball of flame and moving to step towards them…only to immediately wince. “What is this?!” He stumbles back a bit, hissing at the burn of the consecrated earth singeing him. It’s really not so terrible, Crowley muses. He likes to think that he faired far better against the pain when he’d strolled into a church all those years ago. Then again, he’d known what was coming and braced himself, had been aware that the pain would be temporary. Had been willing to face it in order to see Aziraphale for the first time in nearly a century.

Compared to how sleek and cool he’d been in spite of the burning pain all those years ago, Ziminiar is a tad melodramatic, stomping at the earth, looking for any indication as to why he’s suddenly under invisible attack. “Is this holy ground?” he demands. “Was there a church here? Answer me, Principality!”

“No church, no,” Aziraphale replies, tone bright. He’s never been particularly sadistic, but it’s clear that he’s enjoying having the upper hand. “We are on the island of Fetlar. These stones circling around us are said to be guardians of a fiddler and his wife who were turned to stone here on Vord Hill. It’s a rather old tale, and I can’t say how true it is, but the story always struck me: humans punished for revelry, but then also protected in their punishment. Are the guardians there to sanctify the poor fiddler, or to keep him trapped here? The Scots love complex stories like that, where there are so many layers to a tale, so many perspectives to apply. You can read several translations, and each time come away with different sense of what the moral is, do you see?”

“Demons don’t really look for the moral of stories,” Crowley tells him gently as Ziminiar, unable to stand the pain, flaps his wings and hovers above the ground a few feet. His arial position would put him at an advantage, but because they’re on a hill, surrounded by craggy fields on all sides, there’s really no cover any of them can take. 

“Crowley,” the Ziminiar shakes his head in disbelief, “how are you unhurt by this trick?”

“Oh, come off it! Making me gloat like this!” He smirks, putting on a show of confidence the way he knows Aziraphale expects him to. They’ve traded bodies: their ability to ad lib for one another is impeccable. “You heard the bit about the tub of holy water. I hate to be a braggart, really I do, but if you insist. I’m resilient to Heaven’s tricks. All of them. They can’t hurt me. I’m a hybrid, a demon stronger than any other. Even Lord Beelzebub fears me. Maybe it’s high time you get with the program then, mate, and show some respect.”

“I didn’t come this far just to get sent back,” he replies, and then he’s whipping out his own molten sword and dive-bombing at Crowley.

Unsurprisingly, Aziraphale darts between them, parries the strike with an arm like a steel column. There’s the distinct boom of the sound barrier breaking they move so fast, and Crowley winces as the grass blows around them under the sway of released sonic energy. Hardly time to sit and admire this near-literal clash of Titans though: he flaps his own wings, lurches up and tries to land a kick in Ziminiar’s stupid face while he’s distracted crossing swords with the angel.

It doesn’t quite work: Ziminiar refuses to break eye contact with Aziraphale as he grabs Crowley’s ankle, throws him back down to earth with enough force to set the island shaking. It doesn’t hurt that bad though: the ground doesn’t burn anyway. He’s on the path: a quick glance at the scorched land Aziraphale struck with lightening is all it takes for him to re-orient himself before diving back in to attack a second time.

“Annoying,” the demon mutters, dodging Crowley’s second blow, swinging his sword elegantly and jabbing it at Crowley. “I intend to kill you, snake. Why don’t you let me finish off the angel here first?”

“I’ll watch this globe burn to ash before I let you do that,” he hisses.

“Oh, there’s an idea!” his face lights up with delight and Crowley wants terribly to grab him by the ugly beard and _yank_. “Thanks for the suggestion, Crowley.” He inhales deeply, and Crowley has just enough time to wrap his wings around himself as Ziminiar exhales a tremendous ball of flame at him. 

It’s bright and hot as the conception of new stars: Crowley would know since he’s crafted so many personally. But it’s not deadly by any means, and he waits it out, wondering what Aziraphale is doing as he endures the brunt of this attack. It is only as he crouches low, helpless to do much more than suffer through the smell of Hellfire that he remembers he has a trick up his sleeve.

“Leave him alone!” Aziraphale yells, and there’s another metallic ring as their swords cross, and Ziminiar must close his mouth because the heat and the sulfuric reek recede somewhat. “Crowley, take care of the fires: he’ll burn the island to tar at this rate!”

“What fire—oh, shit! C’mon, man, there are humans occupying this place!” Crowley draws his wings back to find that indeed, in the same way Ziminiar had let flames spread throughout his flat back in Mayfair, his Hellfire, while rolling harmlessly off of Crowley’s wings, has begun to spread along the grasses around them, sending thick puffs of smoke up into the air. He moves quickly while Ziminiar and Aziraphale clash once again, putting the fires out with a snap of his wrist in one direction, then the other, losing ground as the winds kick it around. He’s seen enough footage of fires in grasslands to know how frustrating the fight against the inanimate spill of energy can be. Then again, he doesn’t have to face the flame alone: with a concentrated effort, he throws his hands up and wills the clouds around them to convene.

Imagine spinning candy floss: the concentration that may at first feel fruitless, but that ultimately yields a physical indication that yes, your endeavors are not in vain: you’ve created substance from nothing, and all at once it puffs up before you, expanding by the minute, physical matter wrought from empty space and willpower. Miracling a sudden downpour is akin to that, but with the added effort of ionizing the air so that water condenses enough to begin to fall. Within a matter of seconds, the sky above them goes from the graylight glare typical of the Shetland Islands to the color and wispiness of charcoal. “Come on,” Crowley hisses at the sky, sweat starting to bead on his forehead. “Come on, come on, help me out here!”

Thunder cracks, whiplike, and then a cold drop of rain hits his nose. Then another. The Hellfire around him hisses as it’s pelted: water can’t put it out like normal flame, but it slows it down, makes the grass harder to ignite. It buys him time to finish extinguishing the flames around the hill.

Heaving a sigh at his accomplishment, Crowley turns to locate Aziraphale and is shocked to find that he’s ascended higher and higher into the sky in his attempts to catch up with Ziminiar so that they’re nearly camouflaged by the storm clouds. He takes off to join them, only to nearly get knocked back to earth as Ziminiar lands a hit with his sword, then hurls the angel ground-wards as he winces.

“Hey! Aziraphale!” he catches him with ease.

“I apologize dear,” he murmurs when he realizes he’s safe in Crowley’s arms. “I’m not moving as fast as I normally do.”

“He’s been luring you up here so you’d be at a disadvantage, the cunt.”

“Well, I started it, didn’t I? He has the upper hand in the sky, and I have it down below.”

“Do you two need a minute?” Ziminiar booms, hovering a safe distance away. “I told you not to underestimate me: I’m just getting warmed up! Maybe you’d better rest since you’re working with less wind-power, Principality! You look a tad lopsided these days. Glad to see Asag was good for something.”

“Such a typical demon,” Crowley says. “He’s getting stronger the longer we fight: all this stress and pain we’re experiencing? It’s like an energy drink to him.”

“Ghastly,” the angel agrees. “So we’d better finish this quickly, or else we may truly be hurt.”

“How’s your wing holding up? Or lack thereof?”

“It hurts, but I’ll manage.”

“Where’d he strike you just now?” He can feel blood, but can’t find the wound. Still, he knows it’s there.

“Beneath the sixth rib; nothing important.”

“Do you know what kinds of organs are found beneath the sixth rib in humans?” 

“Not off the top of my head, Crowley, and I’m hardly inclined to stop and wrack my brain for such trivialities. I assure you I’ll be fine,” he huffs, scrambling out of Crowley’s arms and completing his descent towards land. 

“Right, give me your sword, how’s that?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your sword, angel. Let me finish this fight for us.”

To his credit, it looks like Aziraphale is seriously considering it for all of a couple of seconds. Then, he shakes his head, grips the hilt of his sword a little tighter—Crowley remembers then: the Norse name for Shetland, _Hjaltland_ , as in hilt of a sword. It’s a sort of omen, isn’t it? This is land Aziraphale was born to navigate. “No. I won’t give it to you Crowley. Also, to your left.”

Ziminiar barrels down onto them, and Crowley dodges his blade just in time. Once again, the demon allows himself to touch the ground, this time landing where the pathway has been cut, because he doesn’t wince in pain. “Has your little trick come to an end, then?” he asks, looking delirious with bloodlust. Aziraphale steps back a few feet, leading him off the path. 

“Why don’t you find out, you sulfuric scoundrel?”

He steps forward, advancing towards the angel, hisses in pain as once again, consecrated ground burns him. “Enough of this!”

He flings himself at the angel, and Crowley senses it in that moment: he means to transport them, to take them somewhere else to fight so they’ll lose their advantage. “No!” he reaches into his pocket then, whips out his ace. 

There’s a burst of heat in his palm, the flame he pocketed back in Hell. Beelzebub’s Hellfire burns something awful as he brings it to his lips and blows.

But, by the beard of Odin, it works. With a whoosh, he’s controlling a veritable wall of flame through the lashing rain, cutting right between the angel and the demon, then swinging it into Ziminiar. Caught completely off-guard, he hisses and throws a face before his eyes, shielding himself from the intense light.

“You? Since when do they let lowly scum like you summon flame?”

“I warned you not to underestimate me, Zar,” he smirks, daring to lift his sunglasses to offer a glimpse of his Harvest Moon-yellow eyes, pupils gone all to slits.

As ever, it’s not really Crowley he needs to be worried about. Because as Ziminiar stumbles to the earth, groans at the burn of consecrated ground beneath his feet and the surprisingly powerful blast of light in his eyes, Aziraphale, peacebreather, sees his opportunity and takes it.

Lightening crackles as he summons all of his strength and swings his flaming sword down, jamming his blade into Ziminiar’s chest. The sword glides through his bones easily, and Ziminiar screams as the flames lick his severed flesh, singing his veins shut so the spray of blood doesn’t stain the angel too terribly. He floats there, single wing flapping slowly, grounded where his weapon impales his foe. He is glorious. He is monstrous. He looks at Ziminiar, at his wound, and his mouth twitches. The image of God’s Divine Plan playing out: Heavenly retribution.

The island shudders, and the stones arranged all around them in a circle seem to lean in a little closer to behold the sight. The air goes frigid, energy and heat and life force all rushing into the statue-like angel.

“Go on then,” Ziminiar rasps, a bit of blood splintering over his teeth along with his words. “Finish me, Principality!”

“I…” Aziraphale’s fingers twitch around the hilt of his sword, and he makes no movement to draw the blade out.

“You will kill me now, won’t you? You’re already a sullied angel, what difference does one more murder make?”

Crowley shivers in the naked cold air. “What did you call him?”

“You’ve slaughtered two of my comrades. You’re already a murderer.”

“He killed them because you lot tried to kill us!” he argues. “It was self-defense. Angels would’ve been killing left and right had Armageddon gone down.”

“That would have been a war though. Weren’t you two the ones trying to stop the violence?” Ziminiar looks at Crowley, pupils pinpricks in his agony, eyes all sickgreen and volatile. “You’re a contradiction, aren’t you, angel?” He turns back to Aziraphale, his hands reaching out to rest near his on the hilt of his sword, an impressive move: even the slightest movement must be torture, given his wound. How he hasn’t discorporated is a testament to his willpower, his belief in his ability to still win, however inevitable his corporation’s destruction is at this point. “But then…you’ve already realized that, haven’t you? That no matter how hard you try to convince yourself otherwise, your halo has always been a bit…crooked?”

“It is…it is nothing of the sort,” Aziraphale says, voice distant, like the way it was when his discorporate ghost hovered before Crowley in a pub. “I’m not a contradiction. I’ve done everything that is expected of me as an angel to stop you and your monstrous posse!”

“You don’t really believe that though, do you?” Ziminiar rasps, wincing just from the effort it takes to speak. “Look at you, can’t even regenerate your own wing. You’re corrupted, aren’t you? A Divine being so far removed from its own purpose that it ceases to function properly.”

“Corrupted?” Aziraphale echoes, and Crowley feels the deflation in his voice. It’s a terrible realization, when they both understand it at once, Adam’s words bouncing back into their collective memories:

_I’m really sorry, but I think if you want to get better, it has to come from you._

Aziraphale’s capacity to heal himself had never been obstructed by any curses or spells or venom: his own internal mechanism was busted, his very Heavenly nature rendered ineffective against Hell’s advances. He hasn’t healed because he hasn’t felt worthy of healing. As the angel’s lip trembles with the revelation, the icy stillness around them shatters, and the winds begin to pick up around them once more, turning the grasslands into undulating waves of brown and gray and green. The island feels less like firmament and more like a boat, threatening to toss them into unfathomable undercurrents at any moment.

“Oh…that, that can’t be, no,” Aziraphale stammers, shaking his head with a frantic edge to his tone, his face contorting with panic. And as he balks, Ziminiar lunges right through the pain, rising to his feet and knocking the angel’s hand away from the hilt of the flaming sword.

He stands, run through with sword, black wings spread, horrific. 

“Face it, Principality, you’ve done yourself no favors by policing this planet. You’ve only muddled your own identify, marred yourself beyond repair. Now tell me,” he’s eye-level with Aziraphale now, holding him, entranced. Aziraphale has lanced him with his sword, but Ziminiar has lanced him with his gaze. “Will you really step further into the muck of your own corruption? Will you end my life? I see the misery in your eyes: this pains you, doesn’t it? You can’t kill me.”

“I don’t want to kill,” he admits softly.

“Oh, of course you don’t,” he murmurs soothingly. It’s the smoothest his voice has ever been. “Poor, shattered fragment of light, aren’t you?” With a flick of his wrist, he swings his own sword forward, driving it towards the angel’s neck. 

The angel’s white wing extends out as he gasps, and the ground reverberates, the very stone guardians surrounding them shuddering until they threaten to crumble into rubble. 

Crowley destroys the space between them, catches the blade against his forearm before it can behead the angel, hisses at the pain of the blow and of the molten heat.

His snakelike body contorts around Aziraphale, crouches around him protectively, his black scales visible, the red of his hair less auburn and more apple, more raw heart, field of poppies, _red sky in morning, sailor take warning._

Aziraphale relaxes against him, leaning back into his touch as he uses his free hand to wrench the hilt of the angel’s sword out of Ziminiar’s thorax. The angel tilts his head, looks over his shoulder at Crowley, nods his head in a wordless acquiescence. This time, there is no hesitation: the way he goes lax against the demon signifies that he’s ready to hand over his sword, to share this burden.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he repeats, holding up his hands in supplication. “But I don’t have to.”

“Because I will, you slimy creep,” Crowley snarls, swinging frantically. His first strike is messy: the sword is heavier than he remembers it being—how the angel wields it so effortlessly is a mystery—and by the time he gets his momentum back, Ziminiar has yanked his own weapon back to parry.

It doesn’t matter: Aziraphale has injured him too gravely, and he’s slow, too weak. Crowley pushes down against the air around him and sinks the sword’s blade into Ziminiar’s chest, right below his throat.

“It doesn’t matter whether he wants to kill or not. I’ll dirty my hands for him,” he says. “Gladly, as many damn times as it takes to keep him and his bloody planet safe.”

“Ah,” Ziminiar’s eyes flick from the nuclear heat of Crowley’s to Aziraphale’s face; he takes in the way they move as one, Aziraphale leaning back slightly into Crowley, completely at ease with the demon wielding his weapon on his behalf. He sees it then, Crowley realizes. Sees the devotion for what it is. 

_He knows I’m in love_.

“I was wrong, wasn’t I? It’s you who’s corrupted, Crowley.”

“Yeah,” he admits, twisting the blade, slashing though his subclavian vein.

The look Ziminiar fixes Crowley with stings, although it shouldn’t: it’s revulsion on a level so deep, it almost feels as though he’s relieved that his body’s death will separate the two of them. Crowley feels no allegiance to Hell, but he is still a demon. To be reminded by other demons just how repellant he is is enough to wring any vindication from the experience of vanquishing an enemy.

With a crackle, then a soft pop, Ziminiar’s body busts into smoke and ash and ochre goop.

Two; that makes two demons that Crowley has killed. He and Aziraphale are tied.

The flaming sword is not holy water: it hasn’t ended Ziminiar’s life permanently, but this time when he washes up back in Hell, Crowley is certain that he’ll never be able to have a corporate body issued to him again. He’s exhausted all of his tricks. His Earth-seeking days are behind him.

Still counts as a pretty cool kill though, doesn’t it?

“Alright, angel?” he asks softly, stepping back from Aziraphale, twirling the sword inelegantly so the blade points downward: should Aziraphale want to reach out and claim it, he can. If he’s too tired to take it, Crowley will carry it.

“He’s gone,” Aziraphale says, looking at the dissipating mist that was once a nasty demon with an ugly beard.

“Sure is. Don’t think Beez and Dagon’re likely to be very forgiving when they find him. Really, sneaking away from torture only to get sent back to Hell in defeat so soon? Psh. I don’t envy the sucker. Not to say he didn’t have it coming.”

Aziraphale doesn’t look at him, stands transfixed, one hand pressed against the wound on his chest where blood is leaking out of him. He isn’t breathing or blinking.

“Hey,” since it’s just the two of them, Crowley allows his voice to go soft and gentle. “Aziraphale? How’s that gash? We better get it plugged up, wouldn’tcha say?” Nothing. “Angel? Does it hurt?”

“He saw right through me, didn’t he?” Aziraphale asks quietly.

The storm Crowley has summoned has begun to break up, whisked away by the natural weather fronts, dragging a weak sun out. The wind still whips around them, chilling and relentless. Nothing Hell has ever come up with could be as consistently oppressive as nature.

“What do you mean? He’s gone, Aziraphale. Crisis averted, we did it, same as before. We won.”

“He saw what I’ve been denying for so long; it was so obvious to him.”

“What’re you on about, Aziraphale?”

His tone is still kindly, but he instantly regrets the interrogative words, because when he approaches the angel, drops the sword to the ground to touch his shoulders, he finds that Aziraphale’s eyes are damp.

“I’m broken,” he says quietly. “Crowley, I haven’t been right since those awful demons first showed up on Earth: it’s because the moment I killed them, the moment I took Marchosias’s life, I knew it! I felt it! Something in me was corrupted, just as he said!”

“Corrupted? You were doing your angelic duties, idiot. You were protecting—”

“I _murdered them_!”

“You’re a Principality, remember? You were issued a sword for function, not aesthetic! Bit of a bloody difference Aziraphale!”

“I gave that sword away and do you want to know a secret, Crowley?” his wet eyes flash. “When I gave it to Adam and Eve, I was happy to be rid of it! I never wanted to have to use it!” he stamps his foot, and the tears break free of his lashline: they roll down his face, gather in the gash along his cheek. 

“You were willing to kill the Antichrist for a minute once,” Crowley points out.

“I didn’t want to!” he all but roars. “I never wanted to be backed into a corner like that! I’m the nice one! I want…I _want_ to be the nice one, Crowley. Even if I’ve put on a brave face, insisted I don’t mind being brutal. I know I’m not nice, though. I never was. You were always so good and I was always…bad.” He looks sidelong at the dropped sword, flames fading demurely until it sits like an abandoned child’s plaything. His sole wing bends around him like a cape, the arch of his feathers speaking to Crowley of his desire to curl up and stop being a physical being for a bit. it’s a sentiment he’s felt enough times himself. 

The demon shakes his head slowly, holds out a hand. “I’ve called you a bastard,” he admits. “Still think you are. You can be rather selfish, and you take food off my plate without asking sometimes. Maybe I wanted to finish that pudding, you tit, I was just pacing myself so I could enjoy it.” A blank expression, no smile. “You’re rude to customers at your bookshop too. You’re terrible with kids. You can be smug and supercilious to people who haven’t read the same translations as you.”

“If you’re really going to tell me Wilson’s translation of _The Odyssey_ stands up to Fagles’s, then I must ask you to change the subject—”

“There’s that spark! Even when you’ve got tears in your damn eyes you’re up for a fight if it’s about your damn books!” Crowley beams at his minor victory. “I’ve got your attention: good. Listen to me, angel. You’ve always been a bit of a bastard. And I don’t think we would have been able to put off Armageddon and save the world had it not been for that. You being different from the rest of angels up in Heaven, it gave you the edge you needed to break free and question them, and to ultimately question the Great Plan. It took bravery and intelligence to do that…and also a selfish edge, to have the confidence to think for yourself.”

“Crowley, my dear boy…are you suggesting to me that selfishness can cede to confidence? Have you been spending time with my philosophy books?”

“I’m not suggesting, just. Stating, really,” he offers a lopsided grin, trying to catch his eye. “Can’t assert something, can’t pose a great epistemological query to an Archangel and the Duke of Hell if you don’t have some faith in your own convictions. And where do you gather up the gumption to develop your own ideas? Well, you’ve got to be strong enough to go against the grain, to prioritize yourself long enough to break away from their indoctrination!”

“Their brainwashing,” Aziraphale murmurs miserably.

“Their hypnosis. Really, getting the Hell out of Heaven and landing that gig in Eden was the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“No,” he interrupts. “Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me. You’d already sorted all this out, even back in Eden, hadn’t you, Crowley?”

“Um…right, of course. Sure did! Had it all figured out, angel!” They both chuckle then, both begging for the assurance that they’ll be okay. Aziraphale’s laugh turns into a cough: he sounds like he has a blade to this throat, but at least he’s relaxing somewhat. He’s still crying, though. “C’mon, enough with the tears of self-deprecation. You’re not an angel like Gabriel might’ve wanted you to be, but that’s not a bad thing. Doesn’t make you less capable of wonders that keep humans believing in Divinity and all that.”

“Oh, but the killing,” Aziraphale says, all mirth draining from his features. “I’ve gone and done what I never wanted to do, sullied myself and my convictions. It’s…don’t you see, Crowley? That’s why I haven’t been able to heal! Because the moment I ended another being’s life, I knew that I could never be the same! I’m a murderer, and I don’t deserve to heal, I’m—I don’t know who or what I am anymore!” He clutches at his head, and Crowley wonders what it sounds like in there, at that moment. He thinks of the raining smoke and poison and flame of Pompeii. He thinks of the cataclysm of the earthquake in Libson, back in 1755. He thinks of the celebratory cacophony raised in Hell when news of the atomic bomb made its way down there. Yes, he knows well what’s like to hear that roar in his head: agony.

Crowley moves fluidly because he knows Aziraphale better than anyone else. At the same time that Aziraphale drops to his knees, Crowley too kneels, reaches out, touches the angel’s shoulders lightly.

“Is this okay?”

“W-what?”

“My hands on your shoulders, is this alright?”

“Oh. Yes, quite.”

“Good. So I need you to listen to me for a mo’. Really listen, get it?” Aziraphale fixes him with a tremulous look, so he takes a deep breath, leans in till their foreheads are pressed together, so Aziraphale’s tremors become his own, something for them to share. “I’m sorry. You know I hate apologizing and look how often I do it for you! I should have seen it sooner, realized that you weren’t getting better not through any dark magic or demonic tricks, but because you felt unbalanced in your own er…soul or whatever it is we have.”

“Do angels and demons even have souls?” he whispers.

“Nn. Not a clue, angel. Not a clue. I shoulda known, though. The Augustine you were reading, the way you wouldn’t talk to me. You felt so broken, didn’t you? I got so caught up assuming you were cross with me that I didn’t even think to ask how you were getting on.”

“Crowley, really. You don’t have to be sorry about that, you’ve been a saint. Er—a very good friend. I was the one who failed to communicate to you—”

“Ah-ah! No talking, angel. Let me get my spiel out, and then if you want to soliloquize back at me, maybe I’ll let you.”

His lips part to speak again, he catches himself, then presses on anyway. “I will be quiet, dear, but if I may: it would be monologuing, not soliloquizing, since I’m here to witness it.”

Crowley bonks his forehead against the angel’s playfully. “Condescending bastard.”

“Right. Carry on then, I shan’t interrupt you again.”

“Look, I should have realized how much you were suffering, how broken you felt. But you’re not broken, you idiot. Not corrupted, or ruined, or sullied, or any rot like that! You killed some demons. Guess what? I did too. Ligur, remember? And yeah…feel bad about it sometimes. But like it or not, we are soldiers for this planet. You killed because you were defending all the humans, and the animals and flowers and the bloody moss and your favorite sushi restaurant but also the children’s choir that sings by that church off Baker Street and the little old couple that runs the flower shop with the organic mulch and—”

“Crowley.”

“Right. Right. There’s so much on Earth, isn’t there?”

“Indeed. It often feels as though we could spend millennia exploring it and never tire of it.”

“Exactly! I feel the same way! And the thing is Aziraphale, the thing is: all I want, all I’ve ever wanted really, since I first got to know you, was to explore this world with you. Both of us, side-by-side, eating almonds or learning to ride horses or crafting pan-flutes. All of that. I’ve remained loyal to you all this time, even though it ran in the face of both of our self-interest, because I saw you for exactly who you were back then, and I see you for what you are now,” his fingers tighten against the angel’s shoulders. He’s a little scared of his own honesty. But he knows how to be brave for him, so he presses on. “I love the Aziraphale who stood on the Eastern Gate without a weapon, watching after those stupid humans with concern in his eyes. I love the Aziraphale who questioned God’s fucking Great Plan, and I love the Aziraphale who would kill a demon to protect earth and then still feel bad about it. You’re a contradictory mess, congratulations. But that messiness becomes you. You can be a prat and still be compassionate. You can kill and still be an angel. I’m sorry it hurt you, but your actions can only change who you are if you let them. If you want to move past it, I’m ready to guide you out of whatever fucking mire of self-loathing you’ve jumped into. I’m an expert at those things, believe you me. You’re not alone. We’ve got this, angel. I promise. You’re going to be okay.”

At some point the tears have picked up again with more vigor, pouring down Aziraphale’s face as he looks at Crowley in awe or terror, it’s hard to parse exactly which it is. His lips are parted and at least now he’s breathing, quick twitches of the chest, like a rabbit in a hunter’s snare.

“You’re my light, get it?” Crowley whispers. “I’ll follow you wherever you go.”

With that, he leans in, kisses the wound on the angel’s cheek, saline and ruddy from the whipping winds around them. It must burn dreadfully.

“Crow—” a sob cuts off his words. “An-Anthony J Crowley…” he touches Crowley’s cheek in turn, tries to meet his eyes through his sunglasses. Impatiently, Crowley shoves them up on to his forehead, casting his hair in all sorts of messy peaks: nothing to hide: not from this creature. “Have…have you ever decided what the ‘J’ stands for, or is it still just a ‘J?’”  
“’S just a ‘J,’ still.”

“Very well. Anthony J Crowley: you are the most wondrous being I have ever had the good fortune to meet. Where would I be without you?”

“Ngk. Dunno. I—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he sighs, and he’s leaning forward, his weight falling onto Crowley’s chest. The demon wraps his arms around him immediately. This is allowed now, it seems. They’re too exhausted to construct walls just to navigate around. “Crowley. Thank you. For everything you’ve ever done…for everything you continue to do. For…finding the words keep my mind going, even though words are hard for you sometimes. Your brilliance is so unflagging, I don’t know if you’ll ever realize how much I admire you.” His fingers curl against the front of Crowley’s shirt. “If I’m your light, then surely you are my courage, my strength. My hero. Always have been…” his voice is fading out. Pity, because his words are thundering through Crowley, electrifying him with a sweetness that tastes too good to be real. Better than being drunk: it’s like being accelerated back up towards Heaven, better still, because who the hell needs Heaven anyway with a companion like Aziraphale present? “Dear…take us home, please?”

“Aziraphale—”

He feels it then: as exhaustion finally takes over, the angel simply collapses all at once, fainting in his arms, white wing bent awkwardly over Crowley’s shoulder, face wet. Crowley draws a shaky breath and rises with his friend tucked against his chest. He looks at their feet. In the places where Aziraphale’s tears have hit the soil, flowers have begun to spring up. _Parnassia palustris_ , he thinks. They won’t do so well out in this open, uncovered place. With a tilt of his head, he relocates them into a wooded area several kilometers away. He glances at the sword where it lays, cooling. It’s a few feet off the ‘path;’ to retrieve it will mean stepping onto consecrated ground.

He steels himself and strides along: at the Villa di Castello, there had been a beautiful rose bush right here, so many hundreds of years ago. The grass burns the soles of his feet, and he gathers the weapon as quickly as he can with an angel tucked in one arm, steps back onto the path, and considers his options.

Rather than take the sword with him, Crowley carries it over to the stones in the center of the circle, up to the two stones who, according to legend, were once a fiddler and his wife. Silently, he drives the weapon into one of the stones. With a demonic miracle, it slips into the solid surface easily as softened butter, disappears all the way in, till even the hilt is inside. Crowley draws his hand back, secures his grip on Aziraphale, and with a snap of his fingers, they leave Scotland.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, thank you so much for reading if you've made it this far! In case you're interested in seeing Vord Hill, here's the [article](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-hjaltadans-stone-circle) I read that inspired me to set the fight scene in this beautiful, remote location. Seems like the sort of place Aziraphale would choose to hold a battle.
> 
> I hope everyone is staying safe and doing all they can to stay sane as well in these unprecedented times.
> 
> As ever, feedback is so greatly appreciated! <3


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